


It Burns Beyond the Grave

by HeatedHeadwear (SplickedyHat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Amputation, Biblical Allusions, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, resurrection AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-03-22 05:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3716806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/HeatedHeadwear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Handmaid does as she pleases within the confines of a timeline that could never be the Alpha.  The first item on her agenda: ensure the survival of the Signless Sufferer.  That said, whatever comes after is none of her business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the classic Sufferer-survives AU! Posting in smaller chapters, not waiting until the story's all the way finished to start putting them online, because why not. My god, look at all those nasty tags up there. Just look at them. This is not a happy story. But there will be a semi-happy ending and surprisingly, no one dies!  
> Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0GHjKMoz988fMc9N2u-kcQZEmrOrLJsR

I.

The subjugglator is almost double your height, knobbly bones and cords of muscle packed closely under rough gray skin, greasepaint thick on his face.  You can feel the cold wall against your back and the throbbing of your overtaxed aeration sacs.  You’re not as strong as Meulin--Meulin, who fought so hard, whose limp body is hanging over the shoulder of a purpleblood near the back of the group--and your legs are trembling violently.  You’re afraid for Mother, whose arm is broken, and Mituna, who blew out his psionics trying to throw a building at them, slurring and spitting, half his face limp.

And fighting those fears for prominence in your heart is the fear buzzing in every chitin strut and bile pump in your body, screaming at you to run from the pain, run run run, he’s going to break you,  _it’s going to hurt._

But there’s nowhere to run so you swallow the sourness rising in the back of your throat and you know you’ll never forgive yourself if you can’t force yourself to speak through the stutter.

He speaks first, a soft, crooning hiss through his teeth.   _“Hey now, heretic, you really the one been as to get so unfunny?  Little aberrant as should’ve been culled, full up with lies?”_

 _Speak, speak, speak._ You open your mouth and take a run-up to the words with a neutral sound.  “ _Nnnnnnn_ listen.  Puh, uh,  _please_.  You don’t have to d... _do_ this, juh-ust listen--”

“Do not suffer it to speak!” calls a subjugglator from behind the one filling your immediate view of the world.  “Kurloz, bag the fucking promotion and have done, do not suffer it to--”

“I’LL SUFFER ALL I PLEASE, BITCH!” roars the one in front of you--Kurloz, a name from your dreams, a purpleblood--and the wall of sound makes your throat seize up around the words you were searching for.   _No, no no._ You try again, extending a trembling hand towards his face as he leans down to examine you more closely.

“ _Uuuhhhhj_ just, ssssshhhhhh-sh-sh--”

“WHAT’S THAT?” he barks again, grinning, white teeth slick and sharp.

“I--I’m trying to...yyyyou don’t have to do--”

“GONNA HAVE TO NOTCH UP YOUR VOLUME, CANDY-RED!”

“ _Sshhhh_ ,” you try again desperately, your palm brushing his face, but now there’s a broad hand at your throat, long fingers snapping around your neck, and he lifts you,  _easily_ , and you know you’re finished.

 _“You’ll be funnier hung in irons,”_ he croons, and with a  _crack_ you lose consciousness.

Things proceed quickly upon your waking.  They don’t give you time to rest, nor the chance to speak to your family before they drag you before church and state.  Uneasy midblooded legislacerators and bored subjugglators shift on their hard benches, ready more than anything for the order for your execution to be issued.

But they do try to make you recant, oh yes, until every limb aches and your head is spinning and your mouth is full of hot blood, but even if your clumsy tongue could have made it around the words, you wouldn’t have.  You’re going to die either way.  Who cares now how hot the irons will be?

They do, as it turns out.  And so do you.  So do you, and you’re crying as they drag you to the flogging jut for your lashes and hanging.  Unceasing tears and tiny, tremulous wails that seem to drag themselves from your throat.  You couldn’t stop them if you tried.

You want your mother.  You want to be young and ignorant and secure in her arms.

They burned Meulin’s book in the fire heating the irons, and you watch the air above them writhe as hard, long-fingered hands grip your arms and force them inexorably towards the gold-hot metal.  You don’t mean to struggle, don’t want to show weakness, but you do.  You cry and pull ineffectually and as they close the shackles over your wrists, so hot they feel icy cold for a single moment before the pain hits.

Your skin reddens, swells, blisters as they haul the chain over the arch of the flogging jut and you with it, jerking and arching as agony racks your body.  Your feet dangle, barely brushing the cold stone beneath you.  You can’t hear the noise you’re making through the ringing in your ears, but your throat is stinging; your mind is consumed by the agony searing your wrists, your hands, your arms.  They turn you bodily around so that the chains attached to the shackles cross in a steely X, and you know what’s coming.

When the lash first cracks you think you think the rest of your body must simply be numb, all your nerves focused on your smoking flesh.  But then a line of fire opens across your back, from your left shoulder to your right hip, and you scream again, the keening of your tortured skull reducing it to a cracked whine.

You lose count of how many blows they give you early on.  It could easily be a hundred, and eventually you do begin to numb to it, your sides and shoulders burning more fiercely than the central focus of their lashes.

At some point they let you spin back around, the cords and struts of your arms creaking as you try feebly to steady yourself, and the blurry, black-spattered range of your vision narrows in on three faces in the crowd.  

Mituna’s mouth is moving but you can’t hear what he’s shouting as red and blue sparks course over the grounding goggles fastened over his eyes.  Mother is upright but her body hangs limply to one side as though unable to bear the weight of her grief.  Her face is ugly with it, creased and dripping.  Meulin is thrashing and screaming, dragging against the chains securing her, wild as the day you first met her, teeth bared to the gums.

Not ten feet from them, a broad, stone-faced archeradicator nocks a blue-fletched arrow.  His silhouette rises proud above the crowd behind him, dark against the red sky, and you think you can almost hear the creak of his bow as he draws.

The arrow flies in an immaculate arc; you feel the head sink neatly between your ribs, and though the pain hardly registers by now you feel one of your aeration sacs collapse.  You know, finally, that you’re going to die, and you’re relieved, you’re so glad that tears well in your eyes again, just for a moment.  And then you realize what they’ve done to you, how far they’ve driven you, and you’re blinded not by tears but by a stark scarlet veil.

You could vomit rage, you’re bleeding fucking hatred, you are  _electrified_ with fury.  What made you think you could change this world, these pathetic, cruel, near-sighted creatures?  What the  _hell_ made you think one short, stuttering mutant could fix  _anything_?

You didn’t even notice the words pouring from your mouth until now, couldn’t hear them through the ringing in your ears, but you’re not stuttering now, not anymore-- _”you bastards you bastards kill me already kill kill kill me damn you all to hell I’ll fucking see you there--fuck fuck FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK--”_

As you inhale through a flayed throat, you feel the heat of blood blooming around the arrow’s shaft and the thick bubbling of blood in your lungs.  The pain is going, you think.  You can’t feel your hands.

You can’t feel your


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sufferer lives on; the Handmaid explains why; a reason to live is sought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was already close to finishing this chapter today, but it's probably best not to expect such frequent updates from now on. Like I said, I don't have it all written yet! @v@

II.

_sour smells and pain, it burns, it_

_sour smells, sour taste, it hurts so bad bile pushes at your throat_

_hot hands, electric buzz--mituna mituna mituna--no--wrong horns_

_sweat, hot and sour, breath throbbing, everything too bright_

_hurts so bad_

A figure blurs into view and a rough hand closes over your jaw, prying it open.  Lukewarm liquid slides over your tongue, and you thrash and spit but-- _”It’s water, just water you idiot, hold--”_

_sweat and heat, then icy cold_

_pain, water, small sounds in timeless moments_

You wake up and beg wildly for sopor slime, and you think Mother is there but the hands that push you back down are too warm and then you’re gone again--

_fear and fury fear and fury fear and the smell of burning flesh and screaming the pain and the fear and_

You’re crying, you know you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do.

_dark, light, night then day, the moons changing outside a broken window_

When you finally regain full consciousness, you’re still feverish and hurting, naked under a rough blanket.  You can smell yourself and you stink, but not as badly as you would have if--

You remember, somewhere in the haze of sick heat and pain, a cool rag on your skin, rough but not cruel, moving over your wounds and your sweaty face.  Your...caretaker.  The person who’s helped you survive when by every law of paradox space you should be dead.

_Who?_

“You have questions,” says a voice, on cue.  “Here’s the answer to one of them: they were going to incinerate your barely-living body.  I got there first.”  It seems almost familiar, but deeper and more hoarse than the muffled, wordless echoes from your dreams.  You turn your head and almost cry out as streaks of pain flare across your neck and shoulders.  Eyes watering, you try vainly to focus on the troll sitting next to you.

Her face is broad, her nose arched and flat, her rust-lined eyes fixed dispassionately on your face.  Her horns are great arching spirals, framing her angular features in a way that serves to make them all the more imposing.  And...you know her.  You’ve seen her, a different her, in your dreams, like the subjugglator named Kurloz who captured you.  

Like your family.

At this thought, you’re stricken by a jolt of anguish so brutal that it makes you gasp and close your eyes tightly.  You raise your stiff arms from under the blanket to press your hands to your face, then jump and cough as two blunt cloth-covered shapes bump against your forehead.  Your eyes snap wide open and you stare, slack-jawed, at the bandaged stumps of your wrists.

At first, your voice won’t come.  You think for a single, terrified moment that you’ve finally gone completely mute, but then something in your throat seems to break and a hoarse gasping noise emerges from your stricken throat.   _Words.  Words.  Say something, anything._

“M-my  _hands_ …”  you say, your voice alien in its guttural hoarseness.  And then, louder, testing yourself for the stammer that has always plagued you, “What...happened to my hands?”

“They were dead.  Tendons and muscles burned through; useless.  Now you don’t have limp, gangrenous lumps hanging from your wrists.  You’re welcome.”

“Did you hear a fucking thank you?” you mumble, and although your body seems disinclined to move you feel the rage swelling in your chest could levitate you.  They’re all dead.  Why aren’t you dead?  Why couldn’t you just  _die_?

“I was bored.”

“What?” you manage, rolling aching eyes in your caretaker’s direction.

“You asked why you couldn’t just have died.”

You must have said it aloud.  You keep your mouth firmly shut, hoping she’ll take the hint, but it’s obviously too much to wish for.

“Understand,” she says shortly, “this is what happened: the Orphaner orphaned his empress.  You prophesied that the apocalypse is coming?  It isn’t, not here.  And the man on the moon doesn’t care what happens to this damned planet if it doesn’t end with a galaxy of dead trolls, so I’m here to fuck around with it.  Some fun before I die.”

Not the answer you expected, but not a full answer either.  Now you want her to say more, but she doesn’t, just sits back and glares out of the window of the hive.  You can feel rage stirring in your chest--the same rage that bubbled up after the arrow struck you--but you’re too tired now to scream at her.  Slowly, your eyes slide shut again and almost at once you fall back into daymare-filled sleep.

When you wake up, there’s a pair of trousers lying across you and you manage, after what feels like an hour’s worth of painful struggling, to pull them on.  You can feel some of the healing wounds on your back cracking open again, but there’s no way you can reach them and your caretaker is once again absent.  You lie back and imagine you can feel the blood from your back soaking into the cushion beneath you.

After that, the fever returns periodically but it’s never as intense as its first coming.  You’re not sure how long you spent in its grip before--it could have been a perigee for all you could tell--and you don’t care enough to ask.  You hardly care about getting better, no matter how much the troll calling herself the Handmaid seems to insist upon it.  You don’t think everything will ever stop hurting.

You’ve been hurt before, beaten by trolls from every bloodcaste, left aching and stiff the next night, but they hurt you worse trying to dig a recantment out of you than any everyday pissed-off bigot.  And the bruises, patterning your body red and black, aren’t nearly the worst of it.  Your back is a mess of gashes, the worst of it amateurly stitched--your caretaker is no doctorturer, that at least is obvious. When you mention this to her, she informs you bluntly that playing nursemaid isn’t her idea of fun either, so if you’ve decided you’d like to try dressing your own back wounds, she’ll leave.

That’s the first time you try attacking her.  It’s hardly an even contest--handless mutant vs. needle-wielding telekinetic witch--but you can’t help it.  You  _can’t_.  You feel you should be able to control the anger, the all-encompassing hatred, but it twists your gut, clamps onto your dorsal column, and for minutes or even hours you forget the meaning of the word control, let alone how to use it.

And when you come to, there are always splits in your stitches and fresh cuts on your swollen tongue where your careless screaming has caused you to bite yourself again.  Overall, you must be healing, surely.  Mother always said time brings healing--

But the thought fills your insides with broken glass and you know with icy black certainty that there are some things time will never heal.

Your caretaker is more optimistic, although this is no difficult feat.

“Only a few broken nubs and shafts,” she observes one night, weeks after your first waking.  “They prefer burning to beating, maybe?”

“They enjoyed beating just fine,” you grumble, raising one arm to examine the patchwork of still-fading bruises.

You try walking.  It’s harder than you would have expected, but not impossible.  Your legs tremble and the rest of your body complains as well.  Muscles you didn’t know were involved in walking ache and burn with the effort and after only a minute you lower yourself with agonizing slowness back onto the cushion platform where you’ve rested for perigees now.  

There’s a recuperacoon in this abandoned hive, but it hasn’t been filled in a long time and anyway you don’t think you could manage to climb in.  If it were possible to grow used to daymares, you’re sure you would have by now.

You’re not sure where the Handmaid sleeps.  You’re not sure if she sleeps at all.

You ask her one night to bring you a reflection pane, not really expecting her to comply, but when you wake up the next evening you find a cracked mirror leaning against one wall of the block.  These days the hardest part of walking is getting onto your feet to do it, and even that is getting easier.  You hoist yourself slowly up, angling your body as you lift it to keep the pain in your back to a minimum.  This would be so much easier with hands, you think as you finally lever yourself off of your forearms and into an upright position.  Limping, you make your way across the block to the mirror.

You knew you would look different.  You knew that you had scars, that you were thinner, that your hair was getting longer.  But it’s different to see it with your own eyes, like looking at a stranger.  Your horns are even harder to see than usual, hidden by a great shaggy mane that comes down to your shoulders.  You want to run your fingers over the harsh angles of your face, the grooves under one eye and across your lips, but--yes, there are the cloth-wrapped stumps, too-short, disorienting.  Your body is narrow, suffering from disuse.  You can see the warped skin where the arrow struck you, the criss-crossing lines of uncountable scars all over your torso, and a shiver runs through you wondering what your back looks like.

It’s your eyes that disturb you the most, though.  The shadows under them, the blank stare, the way they seem sunken and your brows somehow lower.  And though they’re the same bright red they’ve been since pupation, they seem  _darker_ somehow.

_This isn’t me.  They made me into this._

You bare your teeth in sudden anger and find you hate how natural the expression looks on your new face.  You want to stop looking but you can’t tear your eyes away from your reflection, and it’s making your gut boil the way it did when you were hanging from the flogging jut-- _blood dripping from your lips, pain saturating your body, tears_ \--

When the Handmaid returns, the mirror is broken.  You tell her you want a pair of hair shears, you want your hair gone.  You don’t ask if she’ll do it for you but she must know it’s implicit.  God, if only you had her psionic abilities; at least then you would be able to approximate some semblance of functionality.

(Some nights, when the drones fly by, you think idly of attracting their attention.  Maybe you deserve to be culled.)

She cuts it all off, chunks of hair dropping haphazardly onto your shoulders and the floor.  The result is uneven but you don’t care; you have to change that reflection somehow.  Something...has to  _change_.  You won’t be able to bear living otherwise.  That’s the question that plagues you most in the late hours: what is there to live for, now that everything else is gone?  What can you do--handless, hopeless, hurting, but with rage always bubbling inside you?

Who is the cause of your suffering?

The answer comes to you slowly, not all at once.  Even as a revolutionary, you never focused your efforts on the destruction of the ruling classes, only on the education and equalization of the trolls around you.  Thinking about it makes you hate your old self almost as much as you want to be him again.

Days pass.  You can walk properly now, and stretch your back without the skin splitting, and the phantom itches beyond your wrists have almost stopped.  Even the daymares have begun to ease off a little.

“I know what I want to do,” you tell her one night, “but I don’t know how to do it.”

“Live,” she says shortly.  “Fill your quadrants.  Don’t fuck up your second chance like the first one, maybe don’t die--”

“You don’t understand,” you tell her, knowing on some level that she probably does.  “I don’t care if I die.  I don’t care about this pestilential goddamn world.  But if I could execute the empress--”

“Execute the empress!” she interrupts, sounding almost amused.  “Not what I expected.”

Your arms jerk violently; you almost feel your phantom hands clenching into fists and fuck,  _fuck_ , you wish you could punch something.  “I don’t  _care_ what you expected!  This isn’t a fucking  _game_ , Damara!”

A thrill of vicious satisfaction goes through you at the look on her face, but she recovers herself quickly and says, “She’s gone.  Left the planet for conquest abroad.  And even if you could get a ship--”

“I.  Don’t.   _Care_.  Are you done here?  Have I been  _fixed_?  I won’t weep when you leave, Damara--”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Why?” you snarl, and you can feel the prickle of heat climbing your neck, the muscles tightening in your shoulders and gut.  “You don’t prefer it to  _Handmaid_?  I know your name, I know  _you_.  You’re no one’s servant, you’re  _certainly_ not fucking mine!”

“Then maybe,” she says coldly, “we’re done here.”

You’re on your feet before you know what’s happening-- _”I never wanted to live anyway, I’m going to kill her I’m going to kill you none of this would have happened if--”_

You try to ram into her, still shouting, but there’s the usual hot buzz of psionics, securing you in place until she’s moved well out of your range.

Five minutes later, aching from bashing yourself against the wall, the empty recuperacoon, anything you can hit and break, you settle down against the wall, spent.  The Handmaid looks down at you, silent and pensive, and sweeps back both the long tails of hair hanging down on either side of her face.

“...Let’s go,” she says.

You don the cloak she tosses at you without remark.  You don’t even complain when a cocoon of light lifts you into the air.  If the thought weren’t so painful you’d pretend it was Mituna’s psionics; he’s carried you out of trouble more than once in the past, when you were too slow or tired or badly injured.

You float together out of the hive, into the open air.  It’s cold, almost too cold, but after your anger it feels like balm on a wound.  You relax and focus on the way the wind stings your face while trees and hives pass beneath you in a blur of gray and purple.

You’ve almost lost yourself to the cold and the sound of the wind when the air begins to move differently.  When you open your eyes, the trees are moving up past you, spiky leaves whipping across your face and arms, and you think for a moment that they seem familiar.

Then you’re on the ground, recovering your feet, and you know why.  You walk away from the Handmaid, the carpet of purple leaves prickling your feet, until you reach an incline.  The ground slopes away, turning from leaf-covered earth to pale, bluish sand.

And down below…

The sight of the flogging jug sends another thrill of rage and fear down your spine.  You think you can taste the blood in your mouth again and you have to take a long, deep breath of night air to bring yourself back to the present.  Even then, though, the memories tug at your mind, screaming for your attention, and you can’t completely ignore them.

You force yourself forward out of stubbornness more than anything else, because for all that you were a small, stuttering genetic aberration, you were always stubborn.  Down the slope, the Handmaid following, your bare feet sliding over leaves and loose rocks.  Your heart beats faster, your breath comes quicker, and everything in you rejects the sight of the hooked stone column.  There are the chains, there the shackles, hanging cold, gleaming green in the light of the moon.  You remember it all so painfully clearly in this moment, your old wounds burning in the chill air, your phantom hands clenching under your cloak.

“This is where you died,” says the Handmaid, and for once you’re almost grateful for her presence.  Having a voice nearby reminds you of reality, the present moment.  You glance at her and you’re surprised to see that she’s smiling, watching you with those piercing dark red eyes.

“You’re enjoying this,” you say, trying to keep your voice from shaking.

“I enjoy telling destiny to go fuck itself,” she says, turning her eyes up to stare instead at the silhouette of the flogging jut.  “That’s what this moment is.  Look at you: a dead man standing on the ground where he was executed.”

“Are you saying it’s...poetic?”  It’s getting harder to manage the emotions crowding inside you; you think if you open your mouth too far they’ll all just spill out, that you’ll fall to the ground and weep and scream.  You swallow hard, try to breathe slowly.

She snorts.  “ _Poetry_.  Don’t make me laugh.  Perfect moments in time aren’t  _poetry_ , they just  _are_.”

If only she weren’t so damned  _enigmatic_ all the time.

“And is that why you brought me here?” you grind out.  “For the  _perfect moment?_ ”

You glimpse a shrug out of the corner of one eye.  “Partially.  I also thought it might be the best starting point for you to follow your Trollmom.”

Something snaps in your head and you turn on her, teeth bared, and swing one arm at her, barely missing her face as she steps smoothly back.   _“How fucking dare you--”_

“You didn’t know?”

_“--do all this just to bring me here and tell me to--”_

“You misunderstand.”

_“--kill myself--I--”_

“I didn’t mean follow her into death, I meant-- _Kankri_ , listen!  They didn’t kill her!”

You stop when you hear her say your name for the first time since you met her, and it’s only after a moment of surprise at this phenomenon that the rest of her words sink in.

“She’s...alive?” you manage, staring blankly at her.  “But she--they  _executed_ the rest of my--”

“She was taken as a slave.  Now...no more hints,” she says coldly.  “I’ve given you enough already, and here you are flailing your useless stumps at me.  Do what you want.”

“I…”

But before you can form a response from the multitude of thoughts boiling in your head, she’s already lifted herself from the ground, back into the cold, open sky.  Leaving you alone in your “perfect moment”.  You turn slowly back to the site of your execution, wishing that it could just be a place to you, that you could stop the thoughts and feelings that come from being here.

But you can’t, and although the imperial executioners couldn’t have known it, the fact that they left it just as it was when you came here only exacerbates the pain.

Looking at the hanging chains and cooled shackles, an idea comes to mind.  It’s horribly beguiling, awful but so compelling that you can’t help but act on it.  

When you leave, you have a new grief specibus.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his attempts to find what he thinks is the last remaining member of his family, Kankri discovers instead the legacy of the Sufferer and more faces from a past life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, these short chapters are turning out...longer than expected. And writing this chapter made me more emotional than expected, so the moral of the story here is that stories do strange and unexpected things and you just have to roll with it.   
> This chapter also features Mindfang, who deserves her own warnings.

III.

There’s a cluster of business-and-trade hives near the sea, and where there are ports there will always be a slave market.  If the Handmaid was telling the truth, your mother must have been here.  (Perigees ago, your mind adds, and god, how are you going to do this?  Even if they let her live at first, there’s no guarantee she hasn’t been beaten to death by some brutal highblood since--)

Your stomach churns and without thinking about it you turn through the door of a drinking hive.  A moment later, you almost walk out again.  It’s hot inside, crammed with more people than you’ve been around since the execution, and it stinks of sweat and fermented beverages.

But you pause as another thought hits you--trolls are at their most talkative and sociable when intoxicated.  More violent too, but that’s a risk you can take and anyway...part of you is itching for an excuse to hurt someone.

You slog through the crowd to approach the serving platform, but remember halfway there that you’ll have to hold the beverage receptacle with both stumps, as you did when the Handmaid brought you water in the abandoned hive.  That would draw attention at best, and a culling order at worst.  

You stop and take a hasty look around for somewhere you won’t constantly be buffeted by a mass of jostling bodies.  To your left is a corner lit yellow-brown by colored lights, where a group of dirty-faced warmbloods are pouring each other thick, dark drinks and making loud casteist jokes.  On the opposite side of the block, under blue-green lights, some tealbloods in suits are taking turns tossing the crumpled remnants of the day’s paperwork into an incineration can.

You turn quickly away from the coolbloods before any of them can make eye contact and make your way over to the opposite corner.  Under the shadow of your hood, your bright red eyes will look duller--hopefully enough so that you can pass for a rustblood.  Still, scarred and gaunt as you are, you half-expect to earn some odd looks, but when you sit down a brownblood with short, hooked horns nods at you and raises the dark bottle in your direction with a questioning jerk of her eyebrows.  You shake your head and lean back, eyes half-shut with exhaustion you don’t completely have to fake.  A couple of the circle’s other occupants nod in sympathy.

“So,” says one of them, a stocky yellowblood with narrow eyes, “you new here?  Got a culled neighbor, left a nice big hive empty.  Might be able to keep it if you’re willing to compete for it.”

“Just passing through,” you say, shrugging and tilting your head in his direction.  “Came through the woods and across the beach to the South.”

A rustle goes around the circle and you frown, eyes moving from face to face.  The warmbloods share significant looks, take gulps of their drinks, and turn back to you, their expressions sharper than before.  Your spine prickles.

“...What?”

“Most people skirt ‘round the place,” says the troll who offered you a drink, thin black lips tightening further as she inspects you.  “Don’t wanna run into the Sufferer’s ghost or some shit.”

“The...Sufferer?” you ask, your heartrate quickening.

“The Signless Sufferer,” says the other, giving you an odd look.  “And keep your voice down--or did you forget the fucking taboo?  How ignorant can you get?”

The anger inside you rises to the annoyed suspicion in his voice, but you swallow it, remind yourself it’s better to go unnoticed.  Time to leave.

Your head spins as you push your way through the door and into the cold street outside.  So you’re a ghost now.  A story.  Already!  It hasn’t even been half a sweep...at least, you’re fairly sure it hasn’t.  You never bothered to count your days with the Handmaid.  Either way, though, you would never have expected the new title, the whispered rumors, the  _taboo_.  You realize, with a vicious thrill of satisfaction, that the Empress must  _really_ not like you.

You’re so consumed with thoughts about your new legacy that you almost don’t see the troll in front of you, coming the other way.  You’re about to duck aside to let him pass, but you catch sight of the flared earfins and silky coat and on a perverse whim you turn forcefully to slam into his shoulder with yours.

You shouldn’t have done it.  You really shouldn’t have, but with a new weapon waiting to be tested the prospect of finally losing yourself to your constantly simmering rage is practically seductive.

“Hey fuckblood, what was that?  You got no respect for your betters?”

Some seadwellers will demand obeisance and apology for perceived crimes, but this one seems more inclined to go for a quick cull.  He lunges for you and as you move quickly back you realize he reeks of alcohol.

“You--stand--the  _fuck_ \-- _still_ \--and take your damn punishm-- _aaugh_!”

You couldn’t stop yourself if you tried.  The air crackles as you equip your new weapons, cold metal clamping around the scarred flesh of your arms, chain links spilling out of the air and falling with a metallic slithering noise onto the street.

The seadweller stumbles back, looking pale with terror, and why wouldn’t he?  You’re a fucking ghost, after all.  You bare your teeth and turn your mouth up at the corners in the shape of a smile and  _swing_ \--

The muscles of your arms burn with the effort of shifting the weight of the metal, but you are fighting and shouting and  _alive_  and you hear a faint crackle as one of the chains wraps around the seadweller’s thorax.  And then the end of another wild lash crosses his face and he snarls, clapping one hand to the gash over his cheekbone.  And you swing again, and again--and feels  _good_ , you’re enjoying hurting in a way you never did before and you know it’s what you wanted when you hung in irons, screaming--

And then suddenly it all goes cold.  Nausea roils in your gut as memories of your own beatings collide messily with the sight of the purple-spattered face in front of you.  What  _are_ you?  What have they turned you into?

He lands a punch as you pause, panting, frozen by doubt.  And that’s when everything goes wrong, because a seadweller in uniform is never far from his crew.

Unexpectedly, they don’t kill you.  Hard hands and booted feet collide with your body over and over again, crushing you back into the ground every time you try to raise yourself, and the memories are stronger now, spinning out of your control, and if that feeling doesn’t kill you the seadwellers are sure to.

But you haven’t yet heard the scrape of a sword or the hum of an energy rifle powering up, and after a while someone grips each of your arms roughly and hauls you bodily up.  You try for a moment to struggle, but then something heavy smashes into your skull your vision goes white.

When you come to, something about your surroundings seems...wrong.  Different.  But this thought is immediately overtaken by the complaints of your aching body.  You immediately wish you could fall back into unconsciousness.  You’re so  _tired_ of hurting.

 _Then you shouldn’t have brought it on yourself_ , says a voice in the back of your head, but you ignore it.  To avoid being trapped with it in the darkness behind your eyes, you try opening them.  Your left eye is swollen and won’t open past a slit, but your right gives you a grim view of iron bars.  The sense of wrongness intensifies and you suddenly understand it as the floor rocks more vigorously than it has since you awoke.

You’re on a ship.

You try to sit up and groan involuntarily, dropping back to the planks beneath you.  Unfortunately, it seems even this brief movement was enough to draw the attention of the violet-clad troll sitting across from you.

“Finally awake, are you?”

You close your eyes and wonder how long it’ll take someone on board to go for the kill.  Seadwellers are above trials and culling protocol; killing based on personal judgment is one of their basic rights, so given that you swung a chain at one until it wrapped around his smug face, you’re surprised just to be here now.

“We saw enough of your blood to know what you are,” he says, effectively drawing you out of your morbid reflections.  Your working eye snaps open and as you turn it to him you see his thin face stretch in a satisfied grin.  “ _Mutant_.”

“What do you want?” you ask, your voice cracking on the last word and sending you into a fit of coughing.  You hack and gag and try vainly not to move too much as every convulsion sends bolts of pain through your bruised torso.  

When it finally subsides, you look up through one watering eye to see that the barred door is open.  The seadweller stands above you, a wickedly slender knife in one hand, his features fixed in the permanently haughty expression of nobility.

“Ain’t about what I want.  We saved you for the captain.”

Dread rises in your chest, but before you have time to consider what that might mean, he pulls you to your feet and practically throws you into the open.

“We couldn’t empty out your grief syllabus but rest fuckin’ assured if you take those chains out I’ll slip this through your skinny neck, got it?”

The tip of the thin knife traces a cold line over your throat and you believe it.  So you stumble, one ankle throbbing incessantly, through the lower decks until you reach the stairs leading up into fuschia moonlight and wet, salty air.

The climb is hard, the view that meets you upon reaching the top discouraging.  The ship is well-crewed and every single seadweller you see has the sharp look of a trained killer.  A few shoot you idle glances as you cross the deck, but in a second you’ve passed through a heavy, ornately-decorated door and inside a spacious cabin.

The block exudes opulence.  Gold gleams from filigreed wood, the small chandelier hanging above, the handles of every drawer and cabinet.  In one corner there’s a tall case of wine bottles, their contents tilting gently from side to side with the movement of the ship.  The wall to your left is occupied by shelves of navigational charts, save for the corner where a broad, gleaming monitor displays the Empress’s sign, overlaid on dark static.  To your other side are racks of rifles, gleaming in the moonlight from the windows and the lantern bolted to the occupant’s glossy desk.

It’s only now that your eyes go to the man sitting behind the desk, as he leans forward into the yellow light of the lantern.  Your eyes take in the sleek black hair, the dark, heavy-lidded eyes.  Two scars stretch from the right side of his brow down to the bridge of his arched nose.

He’s...familiar.  Familiar in a way you know all too well by now.

_Cronus._

And as always, there’s the unsettling sense of disconnect.  Blurred memories of a younger face and soft, casual clothes conflict with the sight of immaculate armor with shoulder spines like a drone’s, golden rings around his throat and arms and fingers, the cold lack of recognition--

“That’s Her Imperious Condescension’s Orphaner Dualscar,” snarls the man next to you, and forces you bodily to your knees.  “In the presence of royalty, you  _bow_.”

Orphaner,  _Orphaner_.   _The Orphaner orphaned his empress_.  Damara might not have meant  _this_ Orphaner, but you ceased believing coincidences a long time ago, and if this is truly no coincidence, that means...that you’re in the presence of the man who killed the Speaker of the Vast Glub.

You swallow hard.

“Damn right,” says the man behind the desk, and although you’re forced to keep your head bowed you can hear heavily booted feet moving across the floor and the swish of a cape.  “So, Icthus, why’s this fuckin’ abomination on my ship?  Hardly suited for heavy labor, ugly as sin...”

“He picked a fight with Mantah last night and we...found out after a bit that he was off-spectrum, Lord.  Bright candy-red like the...well, he gave Mantah a fuckin’ turn when he saw him, saying the least.  Thought he might be of value to someone, though.  Niche interest?”

“Off-spectrum?”  The little hook of interest in his voice is unmistakable.  “A handless fuckin’ mutant, huh?”

Your gut twists.  He knows, he must.  Why else would he mention your hands?  Surely he’s thinking of the red-hot cuffs and the flogging jut, surely--you wonder if you’ll be able to escape if you kill him here and now, wrap a chain around his gilled throat and pull--

“Oh, I know who to give you to,” he says, and turns his back.  The impulse to fight subsides, only to be replaced by the tug of unease in your gut.  If you’re to be a gift, who’s the recipient?  What possible use could they have for you-- _handless fuckin’ mutant_ \--

“Keep it with the rest,” he says, “and bring ‘im up when I say.  Tell Hussar to set a course for the waters north of Terrip Bay.”

“Yes, Orphaner.”

A pause.

“Is there a problem?”

“...Sir, isn’t that where you last boarded--”

“Is there a  _problem_?”

“...No, sir.”

You try to ask the troll named Icthus where they’re taking you as you leave the way you came, but no answers are forthcoming.  When you reach the cellblock where you awoke, he plants a boot in the small of your back and shoves you through the door.  You land on the shoulder one of his friends almost dislocated last night and yell hoarsely, your eyes stinging.  You think you hear him laughing as he leaves.

You lie there for an immeasurable amount of time, consumed by doubts and bad memories, trying to breathe deeply and stave off the anger.  Focusing all your consciousness on the sound of the waves seems to ease it slightly, but it’s hardly enough to eliminate it.

You hadn’t expected them to feed you, but every so often someone will throw a stale grubloaf through the bars and you’re neither so proud nor so furious that you’ll starve yourself.  Your days of such self-righteousness are over.

The bruises have spread and lightened into a multitude of colors by the time they bring you abovedecks again.  The air is warmer, the clouds are as red as they were on the night of your execution, and to the East you can see land--a narrow bay lit with the brightly-colored lights of port towns.  Rocking on the purple waves not a hundred feet away is another ship.  Your eyes take in the the lack of uniforms and the black flag billowing above them, and you wonder why the Empress’s lapdogs are having a peaceful meeting with gamblignants.

There’s no way to know for sure but you think their captain must be a woman in a billowing black coat, standing with one sharp red boot planted on the rail.  You crane your neck, unable to ignore the feeling that if she would just meet your gaze you could recognize her, but she and Dualscar the Orphaner seem to have eyes only for each other.  You’ve never had much of an eye for quadrant interactions, but the pitch contempt brewing in the air is almost tangible.

Even as you begin to wonder what your part in this might be, the gamblignant captain calls across the water, “Back again, Dualscar?  And I thought our last encounter might have sullied our rivalry irreparably!  I confess myself intrigued!”

And with the sound of the voice, a name springs to mind: Aranea.  Flashes of impressions return to you; cerulean, vision eightfold, psychic--

“Hussar, get the helm to send out the bridge,” says the Orphaner, turning momentarily to one of his lieutenants.  Then he raises his voice to reply to his pitchmate with a haughty toss of his head.  “I got you a gift, Marquise!  If you let it cross, I’d be pleased to see what you make of it.  O’course, if you won’t let the bridge dock on your side, we can just make a fight of it!  Your choice!”

“Oh, but I find our banter so much more pleasurable than battle,” calls Aranea--Marquise?  “Violence is the first resort of the weak-minded!  Send your gift, Dualscar!  I’ll add it to the scores I liberated from your hold!”

Even as she speaks, there’s a crackle of psionics from the helmsman surely secured somewhere belowdecks.  You watch as a slender metal bridge unfolds from the rail, stretching further and further until tenuously closes the gap between the two ships.  On the other side, a couple of gamblignants secure it to their own rail with the hooks at its end.

Your temper is starting to wear thin at being constantly manhandled, but you swallow your belligerence as hands close yet again over your arms and shoulders, maneuvering you towards the bridge.  The structure is textured for traction, but watching it flex with the uneven movement of the two ships you feel your stomach roll uneasily.

“Step up,” says one of the seadwellers, and it takes every ounce of your remaining self-control not to snap at him.  You lift yourself gingerly onto the rail, crouching with one foot on the bridge, trying to keep your balance.

“Walk.”

You take one step forward and instantly feel a hot buzz run through you.  The psionics supporting the bridge envelop you as well, compensating for your imbalance.  You feel first relieved, then unnerved; the world seems to tilt around you without taking you with it and the effect is almost as dizzying as walking without the stabilization.  The sooner you cross, the better.

Your first instinct is to look down, but you know from past experience that it’s better to keep your eyes up.  You look at first at the gamblignant captain, but quite apart from the familiarity of her face, something about her makes you uneasy.  Your gaze shifts instead to the troll standing half-hidden behind her, and you freeze, your bloodpusher contracting painfully.

Her face is lined, not just with age but with scars.  Her hair is longer, more tangled, grown coarse with age and neglect.  She is thinner, her posture changed, but it’s her.  Porrim Maryam.

It’s Mother.

“That’s for you, Marquise!” roars the violetblood as one of his lieutenants pushes you forward.  You stumble for a couple of steps, breath hitching in your throat as a spike of panic shoots through you.  Psionic assistance or no, the prospect of falling is much more daunting without hands to catch you.  Regaining your feet, your heart beating faster, you keep moving.

Behind you, Cronus is still shouting.  “I know there ain’t a depth you won’t sink to, Mindfang, my dearest and darkest, but I wonder if you’ll take mutant cullbait!  It seems just depraved enough for your indiscriminate tastes!”

You’re hardly listening.  Your eyes are fixed on your mother’s face, every part of you willing her to look up and see you.  Your heart hammers against your ribs; your head is pulsing.  You almost fall when you reach the end of the bridge, completely forgetting about the drop from the rail to the deck.

But when you find your feet and raise your eyes, there she is, staring at you.

Mother was always pale for a troll--possibly due to her time in the brooding caverns--but now she’s practically chalk-white.  She seems paralyzed somewhere between tears and disbelief.  Seeing her now when you never thought you would again, you feel your face move in a way you’d forgotten it could.

You smile at your mother for only a fraction of a second, and then someone grips your chin and pulls your face inexorably around...and now you’re eye to eye with Aranea Serket.  You take in full, blue-painted lips, fangs like chips of white ice, and high, sharp cheekbones.  You can see all eight pupils in her left eye dilating as she focuses on you.

“What do you think?” she murmurs, “Surely you’ve heard rumors of my reputation, if only from my kismesis.  Do you think, mutant, that the notorious Marquise Spinneret Mindfang would take such a dare?”

You don’t answer.  You want to look at Mother again, if only to make sure you didn’t just imagine her.  You don’t care about “Mindfang’s” questions, which are clearly not meant for you to answer anyway, and you don’t give a  _damn_ about being a pawn in this caliginous powerplay.

You try to wrench your jaw from her grip, straining your eyes to catch another glimpse of the ragged jadeblood slave behind her, but before you can even manage this you feel your whole body go still and lax.

The alien presence in your mind is immediately detectable.  She’s not exactly trying to be subtle; the sensation of a needle of ice being driven deep in your thinkpan would make you grit your teeth if your muscles were still yours to control.  She hasn’t left you even the slightest shred of free will.  As a thrill of fear closes your throat, you become gradually aware that she’s testing your barriers.

“Let’s see what you’ve hidden under all this iron,” she murmurs, and now you can  _feel_ her knocking, prying, ripping back what walls you’ve built up.  Getting closer to the core of everything.  And she may have immobilized your body, but some parts still respond to the panic rising inside you; your bloodpusher slams against your ribs, air rushes in and out through your nostrils, and sweat prickles under your eyes.  You brace yourself, and maybe she feels it because she gives you a sharp, curious look.  But then she snorts and narrows her eyes and with a final sickening  _wrench_ , your defenses are gone.

_the burning the fury the blood FUCK FUCK FUCK KILL ME KILL ME it hurts mother mother my friends my love I WANT TO DIE--_

It burns away the cool blue haze that settled over your mind.  Through tears of rage, you see the gamblignant drop to her knees, screaming, staring wildly at her wrists.  Faintly, through the vividly pulsing memories consuming your mind, you can feel her fear and confusion.  The needle of ice withdraws and in that moment, you swing back one booted foot and kick her hard in the face.  And it feels  _good_ , just like beating that seadweller, the beast inside you roaring to be fed.  If you had fists you would batter her until your knuckles were blue because she hurt your mother, she did this to you, she--

Hands on your shoulders, your face, pushing you back.  A familiar-but-strange face filling your field of vision.

_“Kankri.  Kankri, Kankri--”_

“Mother,” you say, still breathing hard.  Your face is wet.  Your throat is raw--were you screaming again?

“Let her be,” Mother murmurs, and your heart convulses with fear because why,  _why_ is she protecting the highblood who hurt her?  She must be able to see some of this on your face because she shakes her head and says, “Kankri, her crew numbers in the  _hundreds_ and the Orphaner--”

“Like I give a damn about that,” you growl, glancing over her shoulder at Mindfang’s shaking form.  “I’ve already died once, I’ll send them all to hell--”

“It doesn’t--work that way--Kankri!” she gasps, and as her voice breaks you so does something inside you.  You let your eyes focus on hers, on the translucent jade tears streaking her face.  “I can’t watch them hurt you!  I can’t--not again--Kankri,  _please!”_

And you stop.

You can feel your anger draining away, the red mist slowly dissipating and leaving everything miraculously clear for the first time in perigees.  It’s her.  It’s your  _mother_ , you’re both alive and here and oh god  _it’s really her_ \--you step forward suddenly, wrap your arms around her, and press your tear-stained face to her boney shoulder, marveling purely at the fact that she’s solid and here in front of you.  For a moment you think she won’t reciprocate, but then you hear a sob close to your ear and she pulls you close with more strength than you could have guessed she still had, holding you so tightly you don’t think she intends to ever let go.

 _“You’re alive,”_ she whispers over and over again, her voice thick, her breathing shallow.   _“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive_ …”

And then another voice shatters the moment.

“Already died?”

Breathing hard, you raise your head and turn your eyes once more to Mindfang.  She’s on her feet again now, and though her hands are still trembling she extends one to stave off her advancing crew.  There’s a dribble of blue blood running down her chin.  “Leave him, leave him…  You.  You underwent an imperial execution--I saw it in your mind.  It  _is_ you.”

 _“Mindfang!”_ roars a voice behind you, and you start--you’d forgotten the Orphaner was still here.  “What’s wrong,  _Pirate Queen_?  If I knew a cripple could best you so easily I’d never have fired the first fuckin’ shot all those sweeps ago!”

“He has no idea,” she murmurs, still looking at you, and you find her searching stare almost more unnerving than the callous, uncaring look she gave you at first.  “How could he not notice?”

Then several things happen in quick sequence.  Mother withdraws from you, her eyes suddenly dull and unfocused, the faintest gleam of blue flickering over her forehead.  As you reach for her, Mindfang pushes her carelessly aside, grips your face in both hands, drags you towards her, and kisses you.  Her lips are still sticky with blood.

Your mind goes momentarily blank, then fills again with unspeakable outrage.  You push her bodily away and reach for your grief specibus, expecting her to advance again at any moment, but her eyes are fixed again on the Orphaner’s ship.  You half-turn to see the crowd of watching seadwellers is in uproar, jeering and shouting foul slurs.  The captain himself can’t seem to decide whether he’s disgusted or satisfied by his pitchmate’s behavior.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d actually do it!  So now we know, don’t we?  There ain’t a fuckin’ depth you won’t sink to!”

“Are you certain you aren’t fulfilling your own fetishes vicariously, darkest darling?” shouts Mindfang, sharp and teasing.  “I’ll make as quick work of this one as I did of the other, would you like to stay and watch?”

“Oh, I’ve seen enough!” he snarls, coloring.  As the bridge begins to fold up again, returning to its port in the ship’s side, he turns and raises a hand.  Immediately, the crowd around him disperses to their stations.  There’s a thrum of psionic propulsion systems from below deck, and the ship begins to move, making a turbulent arrowhead in the water.  Mindfang and her kismesis watch each other intently as the gap widens, neither one willing to turn their back first.

As the Orphaner’s ship recedes into the distance, you look to Mother again.  Her eyes have lost the dead look and the blue flickering at her brow is gone, but she won’t meet your gaze.  A terrible sense of dread makes your insides clench, but before you can say a word or even reach out to her, your view is blocked yet again by Mindfang.

“So...the Signless Sufferer!” she says almost admiringly.  You barely resist the urge to hit her again.  Even if restraining yourself is what it takes for you and Mother to survive, you will forever regret not killing this woman.  “Your ideals were interesting, though rather less than your ability to make things difficult for our...gracious ruler.  I found your endeavors  _very_  entertaining.  And yet at the moment all these things are eclipsed by my curiosity!  The Empress’s broadcast made it quite clear that you’d been eliminated...another pest ground under the heel of the imperial boot.”

“It’s none of your business,” you say, circling slowly around her to stand next to Mother.  “I want to leave here with my mother.  No more mindgames.”

“ _Mother_?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.  A growl thrums in your chest, but Mother squeezes your arm and you just nod tightly, taking a half-step closer to your only remaining family member.

“...Let us leave,” you say again.

“I can do more than that,” says Mindfang, smiling as her eyes flick down to the bandaged stumps of your arms.  You scowl and move them beneath your cloak.  “I know a blueblood who crafts the most remarkable metal prosthetics.  Not that I’ve ever required his services, but should you need a  _hand_ , I’m sure he can be convinced to give you a couple...”

“Bluebloods aren’t typically inclined to serve off-spectrum scum, are they?” you ask, your voice tight.  You wish she would stop giving you that appraising, almost admiring look.

She shrugs.  “Not typically, no, but if you were  _forceful_ enough with him--as I’m sure you could be, given your, ah, recent behavior--he would cave easily enough.  If you like, however, I could send a message with you, sealed in my name.  A recommendation, if you will.  He owes me a great deal and would not deny a request that called on his debt of honor.”

“Fine,” you say shortly, “but I’ll read the letter.  And we’ll be leaving within the hour.”

She looks taken aback.  “We have some wine in the hold that--”

“ _Within the fucking hour_.”

“...Very well,” she says, with only the slightest hint of bad grace in her voice.  “Personally, I think you at least owe me that much, after giving me a split lip and...all of  _that_.”  She gestures gingerly to your head, then to hers.  “I had  _so_  many questions for you, but if you’re sure…”

You just nod again, not trusting yourself to speak without ruining your chances of escape.

The letter is written, a rowboat prepared, a sailor delegated to return you to land.  Your host, in her magnanimity, even provides a bag of gold “for provisions”.  You don’t thank her, and though this clearly rankles her she does no more than roll her eyes and huff as she turns on her heel.  

You sit with Mother, both her hands wrapped around your right forearm in the absence of any hand to hold, but neither of you speak.  You wonder if she, like you, feels it would be wrong somehow to complete your reunion on this ship.

You’re both in the rowboat, hanging over the side of the ship, by the time Mindfang returns.  She hands you the letter, sealed in wax with her sign, and says, “Take the town’s central path through the waste and into the foothills.  It shouldn’t take you more than a night’s walking...though perhaps your less-than-robust constitution will add to that time.”

You tuck away the letter and don’t reply, but she’s already turned her attention to Mother.  You’re surprised for a moment to see regret in her eyes, but on closer inspection it bears more resemblance to a wiggler losing its favorite toy than anything else.  Your mouth sours with hatred as she extends a hand to her erstwhile slave.

“Are you sure you want to leave?  I was fond of you, you know.  And I think you also…”

Mother stares at her, and while you see revulsion and fear in her eyes there’s also something softer.  She half-lifts one hand, then seems to realize what she’s doing and looks sharply away, looking confused.

You swat Mindfang’s hand away, glaring at her.  And maybe she catches a glimpse the hell she felt before in your eyes, because after a moment she withdraws completely and nods to the gamblignants holding the ropes.  The rowboat continues its slow journey to the waves below.

The only sound on the way to the shore is the slapping of the oars and the rushing of the water.  The rower stops short, motioning for both of you to leave, and you help Mother off the little vessel and into the rushing tide.  You stumble together to dry sand and collapse together, soaked to the waist and exhausted.  

And together you watch the rowboat retreat towards the dark ship.  If you could you would hold her hand, squeeze hard until the ship was gone and her shaking stopped.  But you can’t, and it’s not until the sails have faded into the misty red distance that both of you release the breath you’ve been holding and turn to hold each other again.  

It seems to last for a sweep at least, maybe even an eternity of quiet breathing and slowly falling tears, but eventually she loosens her grip and holds your face instead, runs her fingers through your roughly-cut hair, examines your arms with more tears welling in her eyes.  She kisses your forehead, just as she did before, and you can’t help but laugh, half-weeping, at the surge of affection the gesture summons within you.

She finally speaks as you turn finally to lean against her and stare with her into the wide, empty horizon.

“How did you survive?”

You watch her out of the corner of your eye, knowing how strange this is going to sound.  “...The Handmaid saved me.  She exists, Mother.  I always thought she was just a myth, but--”

“I met her once,” she says quietly, and you turn to look at her full-on, astonished.

“You never told me that!”

She smiles weakly, and though you know there can’t be real joy behind it, the expression is so familiar that your chest aches.  “Yes, well, I never told you much of anything about the brooding caverns, did I?”

“You met her  _there_?”

She nods slowly, her eyes falling shut for a moment.  “When I was quite young.  They say she can answer any question, you know, and…”  She trails off, lost in memory for a moment.

“She certainly didn’t answer many of mine,” you mutter, and Mother chuckles faintly.

“Nor mine, Kanny.”

Damara and her morbidity be damned, it’s as close to a perfect moment as you’ve had in a very long time.  You would sit here with her forever if you could, but it’s dangerous just to be this close to sea, especially if the Orphaner’s crew decides to get some salt water through their gills tonight.  You stand first, help Mother up, and walk with one arm around her towards the port town.

You offer to buy Mother new clothes with Mindfang’s money, but she immediately declines, reminding you that you’ll need as much food and water as you can get for tomorrow’s journey.  Instead she trades some trinket with Mindfang’s sign on it for a new dress, and though you don’t like the half-wistful look she gives the bauble as it passes into the merchant’s hands, she seems much more at ease in her usual color.

You eat together, silent again now, just drinking in each other’s presence.  Eventually, sated and exhausted, you find a temporary communal hivestack and choose the cheapest possible room.  This means no recuperacoon, but you tell yourself as you settle down next to Mother in the darkness that now you’re together again the nightmares will surely ease off.

You should have known better.

\--

_hurts hurts hurts_

_RECANT RECANT RECANT FUCKING CANDYBLOOD INFIDEL_

_a chaos of shapes, darkness, pain and fire and screaming--_

You wake up shouting, not knowing where you are, limbs flailing, and you strike something solid and living with one elbow, hearing the cry but not comprehending who or what it comes from.  You push yourself away, thinking wildly of subjugglators and seadwellers, sickly-hot memories still pulsing in your pan.

And as the images fade you see Mother, curled in on herself, arms raised to cover her face.  You see her shoulders shaking.  Your insides turn to lead.

This isn’t the Porrim Maryam you remember.  She’s not the same troll who woke you up for grief practice in the evenings, who always had one eye open for threats as you chivvied each other through busy marketplaces, just as any lusus and wiggler might.  She’s afraid.  She’s afraid of  _you_.

 _“--Aranea,”_ she says, and the fearful pleading in her voice makes your throat constrict with a fresh surge of hatred for the gamblignant.  You reach out for her, thinking to nudge her hands away from her face, but immediately think better of it.

Instead, your voice hoarse, you say, “Mother, it’s me.  It’s just me…”

You hear her gasp, then breathe heavily out.  She lowers one hand slowly, wide-eyed and still shaking, and as much as you want to embrace her you know you can’t, not right now.

“Mother,” you say, blinking fast.  “It’s just me.  I’m sorry I hit you, I didn’t mean to.  I was...having a bad dream.”

 _“Kanny,”_ she whispers, and then, louder and more panicked, “I don’t--I don’t want to miss her, I  _hated_ \--why--”

You can hear her breath quickening again, turning into frantic sobs, and what should you say now?  What should you do?  You can barely keep yourself under control and you can’t  _stand_ to see her like this so you leap on the first thing that comes to mind and blurt out, “B-breathe with me!”

It’s the first time you’ve stuttered since before the execution, but you’re not surprised somehow.  The words are full of memories, and in all of them you’re young and frustrated to the point of tears as you try to speak and make only fragments of syllables.  In all of them, Mother kneels before you, takes your hands, and says, “Breathe with me.”  And you breathe, in and out, until you can find your words again.

You move as close to her as you dare and take a deep, trembling breath.  For a moment you’re not sure if she’ll respond, but then you hear her do the same.  Encouraged, you breathe out, remembering the sound of the sea as you sat in your still, perfect moment.  It couldn’t last forever.  Maybe nothing does.

You breathe together, longer and deeper as the minutes stretch on, until Mother leans slowly forward and rests her head against your shoulder.  You press your face into her hair, close your eyes, wishing you could do more.  You’d resolved to stop caring-- _equality is a wiggler’s dream, Alternia can go to hell for all you care_ \--and you know why now.  It hurt too badly.  But this, this you can’t help.  You could never leave Mother, even though you ache to see her like this.

“You’ve changed,” she murmurs in the darkness.  “On the ship, before, you were so  _angry_...”

“I know,” you say hoarsely.  “I can’t help it.  I wish I could, but I don’t know how--I don’t--”

A hand comes to rest on your back, moving in slow circles.  “ _Sshhh_.  Kankri, it’s alright, I know...  We’re both different now.  But we’re alive and...we’re here, together.  I’ll look after you.”

“I’ll...look after you too,” you manage, though your voice cracks, and you draw back to kiss her forehead.  “Always.  I promise.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You may expect: a very confused highblood, mechanical hands, cultists, and a romantic reunion. Also, more violence.

IV.

You hadn’t expected to get any rest after that, but you manage a few hours of dreamless sleep and to your relief, so does Mother.  You awake before she does and find yourself entranced by the empty peacefulness of her features and the sight of her abdomen rising and falling.  There’s a cool purple mist outside the small, smudged window, catching the light of the smaller moon in its curtains.  You watch her sleeping form by its scant illumination, drinking in the sight of her, content just to be in her presence and breathe in time with her.

But it can’t last forever; all too soon she mumbles and rolls over and you remember that if the two of you stay here much longer the price will start rising beyond your meager funds.  You pack last night’s purchases into your sylladex, and within minutes you’re out of the door.

With nothing else on your agenda, you and Mother do as Mindfang instructed, following the main path of the hivecluster up a rocky slope and into ragged woodland.  The tree trunks are smooth and silver-blue, the leaves a dull pink.  To either side are the quiet rustlings of foraging creatures and birds.

After a time, the trees give way to a flat patchwork of dust and brown, hillocky grass.  You think this must be the waste that Mindfang mentioned, and indeed there’s barely a sign of life in any direction; no flourishing plants or sounds of animals.  It should be eerie, but you can’t help enjoying the empty openness, the absence of other living beings.  It feels right to be walking next to Mother again, under the light of the moon.  The silence between you is strange, different than what it was before, but not uncomfortable.  From time to time she’ll wrap one hand around the crook of your elbow and the two of you will lean on each other for a stretch, just as you would have long ago.

But your body isn’t as used to activity as it once was, and several times you have to stop and rest, breathing so heavily that you might have been running.  Mother makes no complaints, keeping watch until you’re ready to move again and then helping you up with a reassuring smile.  You never realized before just how much you love to see her smile.

Still, it can’t be denied that your progress is slow, and by the time you reach the foothills of the distant mountains the horizon is lightening.  At this point in the sweep the sun won’t quite rise, but fear of it is ingrained deeply into every troll’s psyche.  Your feet aching, your throat burning, you hasten into the cool darkness of a narrow pass between great, towering stones.  Mother, unable to walk by your side, grips your shoulder tightly with one hand.

The farther you walk, the more suffocated you feel by the enclosed space--the opposite of the broad, dead plains of before.  You begin to imagine that this will never end, that you’ll reach an impossibly close space, trapped between two unmoving walls--

And then, blessedly, you duck through one final gap in the stones and see…

The ground ahead ends in a cliff, and extending beyond that, a bridge on endless spindly stilts, winding towards a distant spire of rock where the silhouette of a great highblood mansion hive rises dark against the sky.  A thrill of apprehension runs through you--what if the Marquise has sent you into a trap?  For all her talk of “finding you entertaining”, she has no real reason to want you alive.

But Mother is already walking on, and for some reason you swallow your doubts and follow her, careful to stay near the middle of the path and keep your eyes off of the dizzying drop below.  You glance up occasionally at the hive as you draw closer, each time becoming more and more uneasy without fully understanding why.

It’s only as you finally step off the bridge and take a close look at the facade that you recognize the sign above the door.

It’s the sign of the man who killed you.  

You see, vividly, the bright blue of his arrows’ fletching, the shaft protruding from your side, and you turn sharply away, staggering back down the path, eyes wide, heart somehow electrified.

“I can’t--Mother, it’s him, it’s the executioner--I can’t go in there.  I’ll kill him or he’ll kill me, I don’t think I can stop myself--”

“Kankri,” she says, and you look up at her, panic momentarily forgotten at the steely sound of her voice.  Her eyes are burning, her jaw set.

“...What?” you manage, poleaxed by the sudden reprimand.

“If he tries to kill you, I  _will_  reach him first.  I swear it.  I watched him shoot you, Kankri--” and here her voice is hard with controlled hatred and grief.  “...But we have to try this.  It may be your only chance to replace your hands.  I can’t make you go inside, but we can try…”

“Alright,” you tell her abruptly.  “Alright, I’ll do it.  But you have to be ready to stop me too, if you have to.  Please?”

Her face creases.  “Kankri, you’re not asking me to--”

“No!” you half-shout, shocked.  “No, I would never…  But if you need to hold me back or even knock me out…I’ll thank you later.”

She hesitates, then nods and takes your arm.  Together, you turn back and make your way up the many dark steps to the hive door.

The knocker, forged of some dark metal, is in the shape of a hoofbeast’s head, the ring hanging between its teeth.  There surely aren’t many visitors to this place, but it’s well-oiled and doesn’t creak once as Mother raps it firmly against the door.

There’s half a minute of silence, and then suddenly the door slides open with a hiss of automated pneumatics.  Behind it--your hackles rise and your throat constricts--stands the executioner.  Massive, square black glasses obscuring his eyes, no less imposing without his armor.  He hasn’t equipped his bow, which is just as well because just the sight of him is enough to make your pan burn with nascent fury. And behind that, the faint acknowledgment of a name that you couldn’t possibly have remembered through the pain of your execution.   _Horuss._

“What business--” he starts, and then stops abruptly with a sharp, horrified gasp.

“You recognize me,” you say stiffly.  It isn’t a question, but he nods slowly, a trickle of sweat running down his jaw.

“I’m here for a pair of hands.  A...commission from Marquise Spinneret Mindfang.”

The name is sour in your mouth but you can see the impact of them on his face.  It looks like she was right about that, at least.

“But you,” he starts, his chest heaving, “you--were--dead.  My aim was true, they  _burned_ \--”

“The Handmaid saved me,” you grit out.  You’re not sure what makes you say it--highbloods aren’t usually given to believe in such superstitious figures--but when you mention her a shudder runs through him and you have the feeling you’ve touched a nerve, though what nerve you couldn’t guess.

“Your title is Darkleer, isn’t it?” asks Mother coldly.  “Tell me now whether you’re prepared to help us. If you refuse, that will be that and we’ll be on our way.  But if I see you so much as move a finger...I’ll sink a machete in your throat.”

You stare again at her, mouth half-open.  You’ve always known she was willing to hurt others to protect you, but you’ve never heard her issue a threat like this.  It feels, somehow, like a step towards reclaiming her agency after her time on Mindfang’s ship.

“I…”  The blueblood doesn’t seem to know where to look, his eyes sliding from Mother to you and then quickly back again.

“You  _owe_ me,” you tell him, your voice a soft snarl.  “I still have the scars, and the one in my side still aches in the early evenings, makes it harder to breathe.  I lost my fucking  _hands_.  You owe me this much!”

Mother’s hand on your shoulder alerts you to the fact that you’ve unconsciously taken several steps forward, and though you’re at least two feet shorter than Darkleer, he’s retreating into the hive, stopping only when he reaches the back wall of the small, drab entry room.  You breathe deeply, try to recover yourself.

“...Well?”

“I...yes,” he blurts out suddenly, “very well, though it is--I am disgusted by the very idea--”

“I don’t like it much either,” you tell him, stepping inside after him.  “Start as soon as possible.”

“Very well,” he mumbles, averting his eyes from you.  “Very well, I shall--yes.  Follow me.”

You look to Mother.  She nods and takes your arm again as together you walk after the executioner, through gloomy halls and past a multitude of doors.  You see a library, a collection of bows, two separate respiteblocks, three reliefblocks, and countless blocks full of nothing but what seem to be great heaps of broken robotics.

The room he eventually turns into is near the end of a long corridor, and when you and Mother enter after him he’s already digging through yet another stack of metal parts.  You had assumed at first that he would have to start from scratch, but from the sundry bits and pieces of metal prosthetics already scattered around the workblock he assembles what almost looks like two whole hands.  They rest on the workbench like a mismatched puzzle, the colors and shapes of the components subtly different, the finger lengths inconsistent.

He looks at you again for the first time now, nodding at your arms and withdrawing a tightly-rolled unit demarcation strip.  “...I will need measurements.  To adjust what I have.  You will remain still while I take them.  It will not take long.”

Miraculously, it doesn’t.  The trembling of his hands abates as he focuses on the task at hand, and you don’t have to tolerate the discomfort of making skin contact with him for more than a few seconds.

He doesn’t write down any of the numbers from his measurements, and despite your curiosity, you don’t ask why.  At once he begins making adjustments, working with a silent intensity that makes you feel almost as though he’s forgotten you’re there.

And maybe he has, because when you rise to go to the nutritionblock, he starts violently and looks up in bewilderment.

“...Dinner,” you say hoarsely, not much caring whether he wants you eating his food.  He grimaces, his brow furrowing under his glasses, but after a moment he just shakes his head as though ridding himself of a fly and returns to his work.

You put a nudge Mother’s shoulder with yours as you leave, murmuring, “Get some sleep.  We can take turns keeping an eye on him.”

“No, I’ll take the first watch.  You need it more.”

You give her a weak smile.  “Maybe, but I can’t sleep yet.  Too...angry.”

She looks pained for a moment, but nods in understanding and lets you go on your way.  By the time you return from the nutritionblock, she’s curled up unconscious in the hall outside the workblock, a threadbare blanket wrapped around her.  You watch her for a moment, trying to feel some of the serenity you see in her sleeping face, wanting to carry it with you into the same room as the executioner.

He works fast over the course of the next few nights, faster than you would have expected given his bulk, seeming to prefer to lose himself to his work than acknowledge your presence in his hive.  You watch him test the movement of the mechanical fingers, pulling on the cords that hang from the wrist and watching each digit straighten and fall back in turn.

Every private conversation with Mother is conducted in whispered voices in the hall outside the room, and they never last long.  As absorbed as Darkleer seems, there’s a chance he’ll take the opportunity to contact imperial enforcers in your absence.

As the nights drag on, you start to grow impatient.  Given Darkleer’s speed, you would have expected him to be finished by now, but every time you check his progress he’s tinkering with some malfunctioning joint, or searching for one last missing part.  Once, you walk in to find him taking the left hand apart completely.  He mumbles something about a gear with broken teeth, not meeting your eyes.

You’re beginning to suspect he’s hiding something.

This suspicion seems confirmed when you wake up one morning to hear voices coming from the entrance hall.  You spring to your feet, shaking Mother’s shoulder--the two of you had been so careful never to sleep at the same time, but last night you were careless and now...now there’s probably a squadron of fucking threshecutioners down the hall.

Mother equips her weapon of choice--a long, heavy machete with serrated teeth marching up its spine--and you ready yourself to do the same.  Not yet, though.  The sound of the chains falling in this silent house would be an instant giveaway.

Listening closely as the two of you creep down the hall, you think you can only hear one other voice.  This in and of itself isn’t much reassurance--there could easily be a regiment out there, standing silently and awaiting orders--but the voice itself...is familiar.

Impetuously, oblivious to your mother’s hissed warnings, you step around the corner and glare at the Darkleer’s visitor.

“You.”

“You,” says the Handmaid, with distaste.  She glances at Mother, who moves slowly out into the open, still wary.  “I see you found  _one_ , at least.”

You feel the familiar pang of dislike at this enigmatic comment and scowl at her.  She raises her eyebrows.

“Handmaid,” says Darkleer, in a voice that somehow manages to combine disgust and revery.  “I asked you--”

“Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like,” Mother interrupts, frowning at him.  A moment later, she seems to color slightly as the Handmaid turns to look at her, eyebrows raised.

“You’re not the only one I’ve visited, Porrim.  Yes, I remember your name.  You were very easy to pity, you know.  But not  _nearly_ as easy as it is to hate this man.”

Darkleer makes a small, strangled noise in the back of his throat and you’re shocked to see that his face is also tinted faintly with his blood color.  You feel almost indignant--are you the only one here who sees the Handmaid for the nuisance she is?

“You told me you were making hands for the mutant,” she says, shooting you a hard look.  “I’m sure they’re done by now...did you stall them here until my visit just so you could make sure he was telling the truth about me?  You sad, absurd bastard.”

“Such deplorable language--”

“Save it!  They’ve stayed too long already.  Install the prosthetics today, as soon as possible, and let them leave.  Understood?”

He understands.

Within a couple of hours, you’re reclined on a rest platform, the bare stumps of your arms thoroughly scrubbed and sterilized, the hands lying on a table nearby.  Darkleer gingerly passes a sopor-soaked sponge to Mother.

“He will need to be unconscious,” he says, “or otherwise subdued.  Either way, the aftermath will be...extremely painful.”

“I don’t trust--” you start, trying to sit up, but the Handmaid presses one calloused forefinger to your forehead and presses you inexorably back down.

“You think I would allow harm to come to you from  _this_?” she growls.  “After all my hard work?  Ridiculous.   _Sleep._ ”

White light and a pop and everything goes

... _dizzy._

_and your wrists hurt, so bad, burning in your bones, it hurts it hurts it_

You wake up trying to lash out, to hurt and break and cast off the ones hurting you--but your arms are secured by something and you can’t move them.  Panicking, groaning, slurring your words, you look wildly around for your captor.  Surely it went wrong-- _your wrists are burning--_ Darkleer betrayed you-- _mutant is to be executed_ \--where is she what has he done-- _as many lashes as deemed necessary by the court_ \-- _”Mother--”_

“I’m here!  Kankri, I’m here!  I’m so sorry, I thought the pain might do this to you so we secured your arms…  I know, I know it hurts, but it worked…”

“ _Mother--_ ”  You’re still fighting to distinguish between past and present, but seeing her face and feeling her cool hand on your cheek is helping.  “ _Hurts.  Burns_.”

A look of understanding crosses her face and she moves out of your field of vision.  You feel the pressure on one of your arms vanish and as you lift it she says softly, “It’s not the shackles, Kankri.  We’ll need to clean the skin around them every day for at least a perigee, and of course they need to be oiled and maintained but the pain won’t last and...it worked.”

The hand flexes and twists before your eyes, gleaming in the dim pink light from the window.  It’s oddly alien, moving at your impulse but clumsily so.  And it’s hard to keep up--the flesh, bones, and tendons connected to the prosthetic protest with each motion.

“It should take a while to get used to them,” says Mother, watching your face.

“I’m fairly good at getting used to things,” you mutter, and push your mouth into a smile.  She smiles back and folds her thin, worn fingers over your new metal ones.  You try to squeeze her hand gently, but your tendons sing with pain and your grip tightens much too fast, making her wince.

“Sorry,” you mutter.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, and though you can’t feel it you can see her squeezing back.  “I’ve missed holding your hand, Kankri.”

You nod silently, your throat closing on any response you might have given.  And after a moment, she lets go and moves around you to free your other hand.

“Where’s...our host?” you ask, unable to make yourself say his name.

Mother glances at the door.  “In a respiteblock a floor up.  He was exhausted after the procedure and the Handmaid practically carried him to his recuperacoon before leaving.  We could go now, without telling him…”

“No,” you grunt, shifting yourself carefully off of the platform without putting any weight on your hands.  “He might be sleeping, or he might be sending a message to the nearest imperial squad.  Either way, I...I want to speak to him.”

“For a given value of speak?” asks Mother sharply.

“I...no, I just...want to remind him that he still owes me.  That if he does think of sending a message like that, I’ll find him.”

She pauses, then squares her shoulders and opens the door for you.  You make your way out, gratefully letting her bear some of your weight until your head stops spinning.  She leads you up a flight of stairs, into a hallway only slightly lighter and airier than the one below...and through a half-open door, beyond which the executioner sits hunched by his recuperacoon, examining something small held in both hands.

He doesn’t notice your entry until Mother clears her throat, at which point he starts violently and stands straight up, the object falling out of his hands.  You duck down before he can make a move, fingers scraping ineffectually over the hard ground for a moment before closing on the fragile thing.

It’s a thin, hard loop of black twine, threaded through cholerbear claws and a bright red stone.  You know you’ve seen it before and the sight of it makes your heart race, but for a single moment you just can’t place it.

And then in your mind you see it, vividly, cinched around a muscular bicep, gleaming in dappled moonlight.  You see her face.

You imagine him taking it from her body.

When you return to yourself, your new hands are at his throat and you feel a surge of fierce satisfaction at the sight.  You think of how hard you could squeeze with these metal fingers, imagine sinking your thumbs deeper and deeper into his neck--

“Kankri!”

But the anger is ebbing even as Mother’s voice cuts through it, your hands already loosening.  You gasp and let go suddenly, stumbling back as Darkleer drops to his knees, coughing and clutching his blued neck.  You can’t keep your voice from shaking as you voice the question now consuming your mind.

_“Where did you get this?”_

He glares up at you, fury mixing with something else on his face--resentment, maybe even jealousy.  When he speaks, his voice is a dry, painful rasp.

“ _She ran from me_ \-- _escaped_ … _I followed..._ ”

You stare at him, empty for a moment except for the pounding of your heart.  “She...Meulin’s...alive?”

He nods once, reluctantly.

“But--where is she?   _Tell me!_ ”

_“I--don’t know…”_

Another pulse of red-hot rage.

“LIAR!”

The only things keeping you from slamming a foot into his ribs repeatedly is the knowledge that you need him to be able to speak, to answer your questions, and that Mother is watching.  Mother, who hates him as much as you do but wouldn’t want to see this side of you, this brutality.

_“I’m not lying...she wouldn’t...let me...go with her.”_

“Wouldn’t let you go with her.”  You stare, trying to make sense of it through the pounding in your head.  How had she escaped in the first place?  He was so sure of his aim before--surely he wouldn’t have given her  _time_ …

And then your eyes focus on his face, where you can see once again that odd resentment, that  _jealousy_ , and you think you understand.

“...Oh,” you say, and reluctant pity mingles with your disgust and anger.  He looks mortified at your expression of sudden understanding, turning his head away as he hauls himself slowly to his feet.

“Pale?” asks Mother quietly, and you can hear the same mix of emotions in her voice that are rising inside you now.  Darkleer doesn’t answer but at the word the hand supporting his weight slips and he stumbles to one side.  It’s answer enough.

“That’s why you’re not an archeradicator anymore,” you say, staring at him.  “I can’t imagine the fucking  _ignominy_ , letting heretic scum go free for such a shameful reason--”

 _“Stop_.”

“Tell us how to find her!  Tell us  _everything_ you can!”

He looks at you for a long moment, a sneer tugging at one corner of his mouth, and then the tension seems to drain from him all at once and he looks somehow weak despite his broad stature.

_“...Very well.”_

He insists on making himself a hot drink first--a recipe apparently authored by his now-dead lusus.  You watch him drink it with impatience twisting your insides, barely repressing another outburst when he pulls a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal from a nearby storage crevice and starts sketching something.

You’re seconds away from taking the cup from him and smashing it on the floor when he sits up suddenly and drops the charcoal on the table.

“Here,” he rasps, shoving the paper towards you.  “I...assume you  _recognize_ it…”

You swallow hard, an immediate jolt of repulsion running through you at the sight of the interlocking shapes.

“The shackles,” says Mother hoarsely, taking the sheet from Darkleer.  “Why--?”

“They...represent you,” he says shortly.  “Followers of your...your  _abhorrent_  ideology still rally in secret, and this...taboo symbol is their sign.  Your sign.”

“I’m a fucking martyr,” you say, your gut lurching at the words.  You’re not just a ghost story.  To some people you’re...something else.

You’d sensed this before at times, from the trolls who used to follow you.  Your inner circle knew you as an ordinary man with flaws and failings, but the ones who had never spoken to you personally sometimes began to craft their own image of you, set you on an elevation cylinder, made you into something else.  You always took special care to speak in person to those trolls, telling yourself sternly it was for the best when some of them left.

Their reasons varied; your stutter was worse than they’d thought when they heard you speak to a crowd, you were smaller and dirtier and smellier than you’d seemed from afar, you didn’t actually (as they’d thought) want to kill all highbloods…  Some of them had twisted your words to mean what they wanted, swearing furiously that they’d  _heard_ you say that the hemospectrum should be reversed and  _why were you lying, you stammering little fuck_.

And now they think you’re dead, so you can’t stop them.  You take the incriminating sketch from her with some difficulty, gripping it clumsily in your metal fingers, and tear it slowly to pieces.

“Tell us how to find them,” you say.

In the end, all he can give you is one troll--a yellowblood in a heavy cloak whom he saw on his last visit to the nearby town, passing a pendant shaped like the shackles to another troll.  You remind him not to send anyone after you, and leave without waiting for a reply.

The walk isn’t long.  You stop once, on a rocky outcrop slightly too narrow for comfort, to finish what food you have left, and then carry on away from the great yawning canyon and the executioner’s hive.  You find more dust and scrubby grass, this time interspersed with spindly mauve-leaved bushes.  In the distance, over a hilltop, the columns of three dark hivestems are visible.  

The rest of the cluster comes into view as you come to the crest of the high ground, looking down on the sparse gathering of lawnrings and its communal central market.  Carefully, you take Mother's hand and lead her down towards it.  

The market is crowded tonight, trolls on every side chattering and arguing and haggling for goods.  You’re not sure whether this makes it more or less dangerous for you and Mother--surely you would have stood out more if there were less people, but at the same time you can’t help feeling that every pair of eyes is looking at you.  You keep your head low and dodge around a couple of greenbloods in an impassioned discussion of whether one’s globefruits are worth the extra five caegars.

“There,” Mother murmurs, indicating a figure standing on a corner.  They’re heavily cloaked, with their sign embroidered in yellow on the side of their ragged cowl.  You move slowly down the street, not rushing towards them but not taking your eyes off them either.  Mother gestures for you to walk behind her and you do, letting her height and imposing manner hide you from their view.

“Excuse me,” she says quietly as you draw nearer.  The yellowblood looks around and you glimpse a square face, tight with suspicion.  As much as you appreciate Mother going ahead of you, you’re starting to think it’ll be difficult for a jadeblood to earn this troll’s confidence.

“Fuck off,” they mutter, confirming your suspicions.  You’re about to step forward and reveal yourself when Mother speaks again, quietly but very clearly.

_“Blindness would be a blessing; we set too much store in what colors we see.”_

The words stop both you and the yellowblood cold.  They turn around slowly, staring at her, and you--you can’t believe she remembered.  That she, without recording it as your beloved did, somehow recalled the words you once stammered your way through so long ago.

 _Aaah-buh-blindness would be a….blessing.  Wwwe set too m-much._ Store _.  In what colors we see._

The yellowblood hesitates, glancing left and right, then quickly raises their hands in a motion you can’t quite catch over Mother’s shoulder.  She shifts, presumably copying it, and the yellowblood motions immediately for her to follow them.

You grow more and more uneasy the further from the center of the market they go, and the feeling only intensifies as they turn towards a large, low hive with dark windows and only one door that you can see.  As they usher you and Mother through it, you think you catch a glimpse of recognition dawning on their face, but then the door closes behind you and you’re blinking in the dim light.  You think you see the silhouettes of more horned heads in the shadows, the flashes of reflective pupils turning to examine the visitors.

“Fellow sufferists are always welcome here,” says the yellowblood.  “If you’re only passing through, there’s a nutritionblock through there.  You can resupply for your journey and...I think the grubloaf in the heatbox should be done by now.”

Your anxiety has only increased since hearing that strange new word-- _sufferist_ \--but Mother nods her thanks and walks towards the door the yellowblood indicated.  You move to follow but stop at the feeling of a hand on your shoulder.  Before you can properly turn around, they grip your hood and yank it down, the holes snagging only briefly on your small, rounded horns.  The yellowblood gasps and Mother looks back at you, frowning, but you shake your head.

“I’ll be fine.  I’ll ask them about...her.  Go get food, we should leave as soon as possible.”

She casts you another uncertain glance, but vanishes into the nutritionblock all the same.  With a deep breath, you turn your attention to the rest of the room.  Your vision has adjusted and now you can see the rest of its occupants--lowbloods mostly, one or two maybe a caste higher than Mother--all of whom are watching you with great intensity.

And they’re coming closer.

“It’s  _you_ ,” says the yellowblood fervently.  “All of Alternia was told you were dead. That lying bitch said you’d been executed, that your body was burned to ash…”

“She thought it was true,” you say, shrugging, and a susurrus of excited muttering passes through the crowd.  They’re even closer now, moving past the yellowblood with multicolored eyes fixed on you.  You want to back away, but there are more behind you, whispering, craning over each other’s heads for a better look.

_“The horns--”_

_“The eyes--”_

_“His hands--”_

_“It’s him”_

_“It’s him, it’s him, did you see--”_

Hands reach for your cloak, your arms, even your face.  They’re tentative, disbelieving,  _awed_.  The beast stirs in your gut.  You try not to hate them.

“How did you survive?” asks a greenblood, kneeling next to you to grip the hem of your cloak.  You swallow your anger, not wanting to answer, wanting to kick her away from you.  The thought comes to you in a horrible flash of revelation: they want to take hold of you the way they took the  _idea_ of you.  They want to hold their symbol and  _you’re not that person anymore_ , if indeed you ever were.

 _“How did you survive?”_ asks someone else, touching your shoulder.  You shudder and murmur-- _”Don’t--”_ \--but the question is taken up all around you.

_“How did you survive?”_

_“Is it really you?”_

_“Are you going to stay?  Are you going to preach?”_

_“What do you plan to do?”_

_“Sufferer, Sufferer--!”_

“Don’t touch me.”

But they’re too close around you now, staring and curious and growing louder as they talk over each other, growing impatient for a response.  Another shiver runs through you, more violent this time, your bilesac churning as flashes of memories start forcing themselves on you--a crowd, reaching hands, shouting voices-- _”Sufferer!”_ \--they made you drag the chains with you, wrapped around your ankles, hobbling you-- _”Sufferer!”_ \--blood already crusted on your face--

_“Get off get away get away stop stop STOP--”_

But when the shackles clamp around your wrists, cold on your skin, burning the place where flesh meets prosthetic, the crowd only draws closer.  The chains twitch and clink together as hands move over them, fingers threading through the links, reverent voices rippling around you.  You scream, hating it, trying to pull away, but they won’t let go and there’s no room to swing the chains so you just drive your fist into the nearest face.

It’s so satisfying that you could cry--a pure, savage delight at physically driving away a source of pain and anger.  They wouldn’t listen, so you  _have_ to, there’s no other way, and the fear and betrayal on their faces as they throw themselves away from you are so sweet to see because you know they finally understand.

“I’ll only say it...one more time,” you pant, letting the chains vanish. “Don’t touch me.  Do not...touch me...again.”

They stay where they are, staring and muttering, afraid.  And as the fire begins to die you know on some level you shouldn’t enjoy seeing that fear, but...they know who you are now.  You would rather see any expression on their faces than that blind, worshipful adoration.  

Out of the corner of your eye you see movement, and you turn to see Mother emerging from a nearby door with a lump bag over her shoulder, the smell of freshly-baked grubloaf wafting behind her.  Her eyes narrow instantly as she takes in the situation.

“What’s happening here?”

“He hit me,” slurs a stunned-looking rustblood, one hand clamped over his bleeding nose.

“Why?” asks Mother, holding up one commanding hand to the cultists surrounding you as a few of them begin to answer.  “Why?” she says again, looking steadily at you.

You shake your head, eyes dropping to your feet.  Suddenly you feel ashamed, unable to put the overwhelming fear and rage into words with so many people listening.  What is there to say?   _They were too close and they wouldn’t listen?_

There’s a sound of footsteps and you look up to see Mother approaching, pushing the surrounding trolls bodily aside, her eyes fixed on you.  And then, when she’s almost a foot from you, she takes your head in both hands and pulls you gently towards her until your mouth is by her ear.

 _“Just tell me,”_ she says softly, and you swallow hard before replying in a cracked whisper, the only answer that comes to mind--

_“Th...they were too close and...they wouldn’t l-listen…and I couldn’t--”_

You hear her inhale sharply, feel her hands fold into fists as she draws away, and as you see the pained outrage on her face you feel yourself start to shake because of course she understands.  Of course.  You’d almost forgotten the trials she’d undergone in your absence.

“Tell us where to find...the Disciple,” she says, turning to the crowd.  “We are leaving.”

The yellowblood who brought you here steps forward, looking confused.  “But you’ve only just--”

Mother cuts them short with a great snarling hiss, hunching over, spreading her arms in front of you the way she used to whenever she saw some threat to you as a wiggler.  You bow your head, eyes burning, infinitely grateful.

“The  _Disciple_ ,” says Mother again, with a diamond edge to her voice that would make a raging cholerbear think twice.  “Meulin Leijon.  Tell us where she is,  _now_!”

“Our lady,” says one of them, with a reverence that you find starkly repulsive, “lives in the woods to the South.  I’m sure she’ll be overjoyed to know that you survived the--”

“I’ll tell her myself,” you say hoarsely

“We can take you to--”

“We’ll find her.”

“But it would be our pleasure to witness--”

“Wiggler,” says Mother suddenly, “you and the rest of your group will stay here, do you understand?  My son and I will leave and you will not follow us.  Don’t make this any harder than it already is, please.”

He opens his mouth as though about to protest again, but you take one step towards him, glaring under your brows, and he immediately backs down, head bowed.

They give you directions and watch you leave with almost hungry expressions on their faces, but none of them follow.  You’re to look for a cave, the stones outside painted with the blood of animals, a string of pierced fangs hanging across the entrance.  You take out the bracelet you found in Darkleer’s hive, examining it as you walk.  Did she drop it as she ran?  Did he press her for some memento before agreeing to leave her alone?

You realize suddenly and with a great wave of startled pleasure that soon you’ll be able to  _ask her yourself_.  It hadn’t really come home to you when you first discovered she was alive, as furious as you were with Darkleer.  And it was too hard to think about anything else after that but finding out where she was.  But now, thinking about it, you realize you’re really going to see her again.  You’re walking towards her  _right now_.

You nudge Mother and look up at her, grinning wordlessly in joyful expectation.   _“Meulin,”_ you say, unable once again to put words around what you’re feeling.

A slow smile spreads across Mother’s face as well.  “She’s alive,” she says, and takes your hand in hers, striding forward with you in tow, repeating her words--

“She’s alive!   _Meulin’s alive!”_

And you’re both running, tripping on branches and laughing breathlessly and pulling each other along and  _you’re going to see her again, you’re going to see Meulin again_ \--  And now you can see what you think might be the place ahead, a great wall of rock with great sloping gaps between its base and the earth…

And that’s when something crashes into you at shoulder height with a roar that makes every muscle in your body freeze up.  You fall on your side under its weight, panicking, trying to find the presence of mind needed to defend yourself, but even that instinct falters when a rough hand slams you onto your back and you come face-to-face with your attacker.

It’s her.

It’s Meulin, staring blindly down at you with bared teeth, a growl still rumbling in her chest, and the joy floods back even though you know it shouldn’t, you know you should be afraid.  Teeth sink into your shoulder and claws catch your arms, and though you cry out in pain it turns just as quickly into laughter, incredulous and uncontrollable.  She’s still doing her best to hurt you any way she can but you wrap your arms around her rather than pushing her away, drawing her down to you.  Her claws cut into your side and your eyes water with the pain, but the evidence of her presence is so welcome, makes everything so much more  _real_ that you’re almost grateful for it.  It’s different from the crowding, whispering cultists, fierce and straightforward and good.

And then you hear mother shouting, and there’s an abrupt absence of weight and pain.  You can hear scuffling, Mother trying breathlessly to bring Meulin back to herself.  As you sit up, blood trickling from your shoulder and arms, you finally see all of her.

Like you, like Mother, she’s changed.  Her hair is longer, a matted black mane bound up in strips of cloth, dirt and blood covering her body.  And although she’s still wearing the skirt and leggings you remember, both are badly torn and she’s naked from the waist up.  

She’s always had scars, thick bands of lighter skin criss-crossing her torso, but there are newer, fresher ones now, most notably four green-tinted lines that look like clawmarks stretching from her right shoulder to her left hipbone.  You watch her twist and struggle in Mother’s grip, muscles shifting and straining under her skin.  You shift forward in a crouch and lower yourself slowly to your knees, looking up at Meulin’s snarling face and unfocused eyes.

“Beloved,” you murmur, “it’s me.  Please, look at me...look, I’m here--”

Mother grunts as Meulin thrashes violently, driving an elbow into her side.  “ _\--Uff--!_   Ugh...Kankri, not to rush you but--”

“I know, I know!  Meulin,  _ssshhhh_...Meulin, it’s Kankri, look...look…”

You can see the moment when she remembers who she is, and relief rushes over you as she relaxes, looking bewildered, pulling easily away from Mother’s loosened grip to stare between the two of you.  When she speaks, her voice is raw and breathless.

“It’s you.  It’s  _both_  of you.  How...is this real?”

“It’s a long story,” you manage, your voice shaking.  You’re trying to force the wide grin off your face but it won’t go.  Your arms and sides are burning but you can’t stop smiling at her.  You want to go to her, to hold her, but you also want to wait for her to move first and she’s still frozen, wary and bewildered.

“...Porrim,” she says, eyes fixed on Porrim.  Mother nods, one hand clutching her side.  “...Kankri,” she says, slowly turning her gaze to you.  You nod, opening your arms, willing her to take even a single step forward.

And then, all at once, she surges at you again and this time you lean forward to meet her, gasping at the force with which her arms tighten around your body.  Her hands move over your shoulders, your back, your waist, without tenderness or leisure but with cursory roughness, as though she’s checking to make sure you’re really there.  She withdraws, fingers working over your throat and jaw, pressing against your pulse, and then kisses you fiercely with hot, chapped lips.  

You could stay like this forever, in this one burning moment, but as soon as your hands touch her bare back she yells and jumps back again.  She grips both your arms and raises them between you, face tightening as her fingers brush over the swelling and scars where the metal meets your flesh.

“Your hands…?”

You shake your head and raise one hand, still clumsy and alien, to rest it awkwardly against her face.  You just barely remember how this felt before, warm skin against your fingers, the hard corner of her chin in your palm.  And now--

You let your head drop slowly, your breaths coming faster, tears welling in your eyes.

“I wish--I wish I could feel...Meulin, I--I can’t...”

You’re crying, and it’s not the same as crying with Mother or sobbing in anger after the Handmaid revived you.  You’ve recovered a missing piece, but it doesn’t fit the same and you want it to so badly and you  _love her_ \--

She leans in, presses her forehead to yours, and you love everything about her.  You feel her against you, smell blood and sweat on her, you can see the jewel-bright green of her eyes inches from yours, and you press back, your nose bumping hers, reaching forward to rest your hands on her waist.

“I missed you,” she breathes harshly, and sucks in a quick breath of air, the precursor to a sob.

“I missed you too,” you tell her, and then again, wanting her to understand how much you mean it,  _“I missed you too, so much--I can’t believe you’re--”_

And then Mother’s arms close around both and the three of you stand there, just holding onto each other.

You tell Meulin the story bit by bit as she skins a deer and you make a fire.  At Mother’s insistence, she soaks a cloth in a stream and scrubs most of the dirt and blood off of herself.  While the deer cooks, you undo the cloth holding her hair and start trying to work through her tangles.  It’s difficult to treat the task gently without feeling in your hands, but she doesn’t complain beyond the occasional twitch or grunt.

Meulin was never the cleanest of eaters, but watching her bury her face in hot meat and fat, stripping it greedily from the bone, you think she must have lost her recollections of what manners Mother instilled in her during your time together.

Later, after you’ve all cleaned the grease from your hands and the fire is piled high with branches, you lift yourself away from Meulin’s shoulder where you’ve been leaning for the past hour.  You’ve been trying to find the right words to ask her something--to address a question you’re not sure you want answered.

“After the execution...” you start slowly, and you can almost feel the atmosphere around the fire sharpen.  You swallow and try again, speaking faster to get it over with.  “Afterwards, what happened?

“They took Porrim first,” says Meulin shortly, and though the almost brutal bluntness of the statement makes your heart skip a beat, you’re glad she doesn’t hesitate and draw it out.  “I never knew what happened to her.  And...the  _murderer_  told you how I survived.”

You feel a thrill of pride at the disgust in her voice when she mentions him, the haughty tilt of her jaw.  You have always admired her strength, and no matter how any of you have changed it’s deeply reassuring to know she’s still steadfast.

And then it occurs to you that there’s something she didn’t mention.  The part you really wanted to know, the answer you might not want to hear.

“Mituna,” you say, your throat dry.  “Do you know what happened to--”

Meulin doesn’t answer at first, and with every second your heart sinks a little further.  Mother bows her head and you think she, like you, must be expecting the worst.

“Mituna...is as good as dead.”

You stare, hardly daring to believe it.  “... _As good as_?”

She must see the hope on your face, because she frowns and shakes her head when she looks at you.  “Kankri, I know what you’re thinking, but--”

“He’s alive, then,” you breathe, and then, half-laughing, the sound cracking in your throat, “we’re all alive!  I can’t--I don’t fucking believe it!”

“Language, Kankri,” says Mother, gentle but firm.  You’re too caught up in private revelry to care or think how odd it feels to be chided for swearing after all this time.

“They made him a helmsman,” says Meulin bluntly, and it doesn’t quite stop you short but it does dampen the wild flare of joy.  A helmsman.  Installed in a ship somewhere out in space, who-knows-where--

You try to rally, plans half-forming in your mind then scattering just as quickly.  “I...alright, but if we could find him, maybe hire a biotechnician--”

“It’s not finding him that’ll be the hard part,” says Meulin, with a kind of hard humor in her voice.  “They installed him in Her flagship.”

Mother gasps.  You don’t even have the agency for that; for a moment it seems you can’t even force your lungs to expand or your eyes to blink.  You stare at Meulin, willing her to say she might be mistaken or even lying--but there’s no reason for her to do so and she holds your gaze steadily, honestly.

And then, as you open your mouth to say...you don’t know what, something, anything, Meulin’s eyes widen and she whips around, a snarl tugging at her lips.

“What?” you ask, tensing as well.  She shakes her head and glances behind her.  You do the same, and for a moment all you can see are the green afterimages of the flames.

And then a shape moves--a great slender shape you took to be a tree trunk--and you see the spiraling horns and wild mass of hair and your heartbeat doubles as a pale, paint-daubed face slides into the illumination of the firelight.  In the woods all around echoes a chorus of eerie laughter.

“ _Hey, now, heretic_ ,” says the subjugglator, and grins down at you and you  _know_ him, not just from your dreams but from almost half a sweep ago-- _double your height, knobbly bones and cords of muscle_.  “Thought for sure you were deader than the gods of unfunny fucking science.  You are a miracle of a joke, now aren’t you?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another second chance for the Sufferer leads to a new outcome and with new, formidable allies, an ambition that never seemed possible before seems almost easy to achieve.

V.

The last time this happened, you ran.  But this time there’s nowhere to run; you’re already trapped in the corner and you  _know_ how this ends, how it  _has_ to end--you’re no better a fighter, no faster a runner, and the subjugglator towering over you can only have gotten taller in the intervening time.  Your mind races as chuckling shadows crowd in on every side, and you can’t tell whether it’s their special brand of psychic cruelty making your heart race or just your own fear.

Mother and Meulin have equipped their weapons but you can’t bring yourself to summon the chains from your specibus because  _it’s no different_.  You’re all going to die this time, probably right here, without a trial, and all that’s changed is that you’re thinner and angrier and you don’t--

You don’t stutter anymore.

Meulin tenses to rush the leader but you spread your arms hastily, with a violent shake of your head, then fix your gaze on the purpleblood before you.  Meulin stops, but doesn’t relax.  Mother edges closer to you and whispers harshly,  _“What are you doing?”_

“I can change it,” you tell her, trying to keep your voice steady.

“You all need to shut your damn chuckleholes,” says the subjugglator softly--almost inaudibly--crouching a little so as to be on eye level with you.  “Unless you’re coming up with the most cackle-ass joke in the history of humor, in which case I’ll sanctify it with a good bout of mirth before smackin’ your nugs off.  OR NOT, AS I SEE FIT.”

The roar seems to shake your skull--again, that flat wall of noise, without passion or emotion--but you force yourself not to flinch, force yourself to keep watching his eyes.  They’re wide and dark and deep purple, and you almost think you can see the scleras reddening as you watch.

You don’t think he even sees you.  Not as a thinking, feeling being, not as a person.  And it’s hard as hell to see  _him_ as one, but you have to because this  _has to work._

As he opens his mouth again, you step sharply forward and reach out to grip his forearm.  For whatever reason--perhaps because doesn’t see you even as a potential threat--he allows it, though his eyes narrow slightly.

“Kurloz...Makara,” you say slowly, hoping desperately that you’ve got it right, and (you can’t fucking believe it) he stills abruptly at the sound of the name.  Your bloodpusher pounds in relief and, determined to say something else before he raises his voice again, you squeeze his wrist and  _sshhh_ him as loudly as you can.

For a moment there’s absolute silence; only the fire’s crackling and the rush of wind through the trees present themselves to your ears.  And then he leans forward and starts bellowing, but this time you don’t stop, you don’t even listen to what he’s saying.  You raise your other hand, feeling somehow detached from it and its trembling, and bring it into firm contact against Kurloz’s face.

His voice only falters for a moment, but that tells you what you need to know.  As the barrage of sound returns in full force, you take a deep breath and shout over him, with all the wrath you felt when you were hung in chains.

 _“Shut the fuck up and calm the fuck down, dumbass!_ SHOOSH!!”

There’s an open, shocked silence for at least three seconds, and then a voice from the shadows says, with great feeling, “What the  _fuck_.”

Kurloz spares the speaker only the barest glance, then turns back to you, studying you with more care this time.  You swallow hard, but reach out again.  He doesn’t stop you, but his face doesn’t soften either.  Finally he says slowly, “You’re tryin’ this with me, candyblood?  You know I’m the Grand motherfuckin’ Highblood now?  HIGHER THAN YOU.  HIGHER THAN ALL.”

You ignore this completely and pat his face clumsily, trying not to think about whether the gesture feels anything like the firm, anchoring touch of a proper moirail.  “ _Ssshhhooosssshhhhh!_ ”

“ _Grand Highblood,_ ” he says again, eyes narrowing, searching your face.

“You’re a fucking idiot, is what you are,” you tell him bluntly.  “All that power and that ‘ _higher than anyone_ ’ shit, but you still answer to the fish bitch?”

He makes a startled, high-pitched noise that might almost be a laugh.  Behind him, the rustle of voices rises again.

“Are you going to drag me in again?” you ask him, forcing a gentleness into your voice that feels wholly unnatural in the circumstances.  “Offer me up to her for execution  _again_?  I’d like to see you try and summon the bloodlust for that while I’m here.”

It’s the most brazen quadrant solicitation you’ve ever made, but then again your life has never depended on successfully flirting with someone.  You maintain eye contact, trying not to be unnerved by how slowly he blinks or the way his mouth twitches every time you move the hand touching his face.

“You’re... _different_ ,” he hisses finally, and you manage a humorless grin.

“I know.  Whose fault do you think that is?”

“You really got your aim on for my pale quadrant?”

“Pale as fucking snow,” you say, giving his cheek one more businesslike pat.  For a moment, he just stares at you without blinking, without moving at all.

And then he embraces you and you’re engulfed in hard arms and shaggy hair, all smelling of sugar and greasepaint.  When he draws back, he’s grinning so widely that you can practically see all of his teeth.

“WE’LL SPEND THE NIGHT ON-SHIP,” he bellows, and then, softly, “No fear, what’s-your-name, Signless heretic Sufferer--”

“Kankri,” you correct him.  “And how do we know you won’t report us as soon as we’re asleep?”

He looks genuinely injured.  “Genuine pale don’t fuck around, candyblood Kankri, DON’T EVEN FUCK AROUND.”

“I--” you begin, but he’s already got an arm around your shoulders and the rest of his squad, apparently satisfied with this turn of events, closes in around you and your family.  You look at them, both uncertain and suspicious, and nod once, willing them to trust you.

After a moment, Meulin’s clawed gauntlets vanish.  Then Mother, looking as though she would rather do anything else, puts away her machete as well.  All together, you follow the cadre of purplebloods away from the fire.

Not all the subjugglators are as tall as their Grand Highblood, but walking among them is still intimidating as hell.  To either side is a forest of legs, the blurs of swinging arms, and a chorus of muttering in the half-intelligible lexicon of their church.  You keep your eyes on Kurloz, occasionally taking a moment to look at Mother or Meulin and give them your closest approximation of a reassuring smile.

Meulin keeps pace easily, but after what might have been a half hour both you and Mother are winded and aching.  You use the last of your breath to tell Kurloz as sternly as possible that you can’t keep up like this.  You fully expect his purpleblooded comrades to object, but it’s a mark of either how little they care or how much respect they have for their commander’s quadrants that they slow the pace without complaint.

Once you’ve recovered your breath and made sure Mother’s condition has improved, you move boldly to the front of the phalanx and clear your throat loudly.  Kurloz looks down at you, his facepaint a pale, grinning mask in the darkness.

“YEAH?”

“How did you find us?” you ask, trying not to grimace at his volume.

“Broadcast from that expatriate fucker Zahhak,” says Kurloz, grinning.  “Maybe a night ago.  Took us a while to make it and by the time we got there he was unpleasingly fuckin’ tight-lipped on as to why he called in the first.  Eventually told us you were still kickin’, candyblood.  Made you a pair of hands, he said, which I see to be gods’ own truth, but he wouldn’t tell us where you were headed.  Not even with a couple of his own arrows stuck through him like a damn blueblood kebab.”

You glance back at Meulin, who is clearly listening but seems stony and untouched by this piece of news.  You’re glad.

“Then how--” you start, and a subjugglator to you right laughs suddenly.  A spike of fear pierces your bloodpusher, thoughts of deception and betrayal, but then she starts talking and your nerves settle somewhat.

“He put a tracker in your prosthetics, muckblood,” she says cheerfully, and then looks slightly chagrined as Kurloz throws her a warning look.  “Uh...whatever your name is.  Point is, didn’t take much exploring to find out he’d wanted to find out where you were going.  Might even have been about to follow you when we turned up!”

Meulin scoffs.  You reach back blindly, knowing you won’t feel it when her fingers interlace with yours but trusting she’ll take your hand.  A moment later, the sensation of tension in your arm--the slightest hint of a tug--tells you you were right.  You fall back to walk beside her, shoulder to shoulder, bolstered by her presence.  Kurloz looks at the two of you over his shoulder but says nothing--whether because he has nothing to say or because Meulin is glaring so fiercely at him.

Ahead of you, the silhouette of a ship looms into view through the trees--a great, blunt-hulled thing with windows made of a patchwork of different colors.  You blink hard, shake your head at the sight of the rainbow hues, try to shake the sudden vivid image of a battlefield splattered with the blood of your followers.

_It’s going to be fine._

Up a gangplank, into the belly of the ship where great striped canvases hang from the walls and old, bleached cartilage struts act as grisly decorations.  The air smells of blood and sweet, sticky drinks.  Kurloz takes a deep breath, and for a moment you think he’s savoring the aroma, but then his voice booms across the cargo bay and you wince as the enclosed space magnifies it tenfold.

 _“HOLD TRANSMISSIONS AND CULL ENGINE POWER, GRUBS!_ THE MUTANT KANKRI AND HIS FRIENDS ARE OUR GUESTS!”

After the great chorus of whoops, one of the subjugglators nearby calls, “ _Guests?_ For the paintbay, Highblood?”

“For bein’ here, NOOKSTENCH WIGGLER, back the fuck off!”

And they do, instantly.  The storm in your bile sac settles, if only by a little.  If this were really a trap, there would be no reason not to spring it now, so it would seem you and your family truly are safe, if only for the moment.

You’re escorted up metal flights of stairs, through corridors, all covered in a patchwork of scrap metal and bright multi-hued blood.  It’s hard to tell through the distorted windows, but you think it’s growing lighter outside.  It dawns on you as you turn away that you feel very tired indeed.  You hope you won’t be executed for falling asleep if he tries to initiate a feelings jam.

But as it turns out, your first day with a moirail has no such requirements, and there are guest quarters for you and your family.  You wouldn’t have expected it on a military ship, but according to Kurloz, when legislacerators travel on-board they expect accommodations without blood spattered on their walls.  You’ve slept in worse places.  There’s an ablution basin in on corner and a small thermal hull next to that, and even a recuperacoon installed in one corner.  As Kurloz leaves you glance at Mother and murmur, “Do you think…”

She glances at the sleeping apparatus and shakes her head.  “Maybe you could--for your nightmares--but it’s best to stay alert here.”

Meulin nods and so do you, settling down against a wall.  When Mother gives you a concerned look, you twist a smile at her and say, “I’ll risk nightmares if there’s any chance this won’t work out.  It would be my fault anyway.”

They don’t argue.  All of you sleep with weapons at your sides--or, in your case, coiled on top of your chest.  Somehow, the weight of the chains you were hung from is comforting now, though not nearly so comforting as the presence of Mother and Meulin.  You listen to their breathing as you slip into unconsciousness, and somehow, blessedly, your dreams are no more than vague suggestions of pain and noise.  

When you wake up, your family is still there.

So is Kurloz.

It takes all your self-control not to assume a defensive stance--your body is screaming that there’s a highblood,  _the_ highblood, crouching not five feet from you, watching you so carefully you feel he’s reading your mind.  Every impulse directs you to fight.

But you don’t.  Instead, with an effort, you remove your chains and lean forward, meeting his gaze.  He smiles, and you’re almost physically shocked by how genuine it is.  Last night feels like a dream now, and somehow you weren’t expecting...this.

“Good evenin’,” he says softly, and then he raises his chin to look at Mother and Meulin and you realize what’s coming a split second before he opens his mouth.  “I’D ASK FOR SOME TIME ALONE WITH MY PALEBROTHER HERE.  ALL MY SQUADS HAVE HARD ORDERS NOT TO KILL NOR FUCK YOU ABOUT.   _So have some nutrition, Fetric outside the door’ll show you where._ ”

“And why would you want to be alone?” asks Mother icily, letting her hands drop from her ears.  Kurloz gives her an almost wounded look.

“Ain’t it always a motherfucker’s business what he gets up to in his quads, jade lady?”

“Not when  _a motherfucker_ was responsible for the torture and near-death of the  _quad_ in question,” she replies with extreme disdain.

Kurloz growls uneasily and, grateful as you are for Mother’s concern, you think it might be time for you to put a stop to this conflict.  You turn your back on your...moirail, for lack of a better term, and whisper to Mother and Meulin,  _“I’ll be fine.  I promise.  I honestly think he’s telling the truth.”_

Mother purses her lips but Meulin nods instantly.  This is how it’s always been; you trust her, and she trusts you.  It’s Mother who questions you, restrains you, makes you consider your own safety.  And many times that’s saved your life, but tonight…

You maintain eye contact with her until finally she nods, jerkily, and stands up straightening out her skirts.

“Very well,” she says, glancing at Kurloz, “but this meal had better consist of more than cluckbeast-on-a-stick and Faygo.”

He considers this.  “...It might.”

“Good enough for me,” says Meulin, and you’re glad to see her take Mother’s hand as they leave the block.  They’ll keep each other safe, you’re sure of it.  You have to be.

You don’t look back at Kurloz at first.  You can feel blood pounding in your throat, partially because you still aren’t entirely convinced that he won’t tear you open and paint this whole block bright candy-red.  Your color is one-of-a-kind, after all.  And quite apart from  that, you’ve never...done this before.  Your behavior up until now has been based purely on what you’ve seen of pale relationships in public, and you’re not entirely sure how one is supposed to proceed privately.

Fortunately, he’s the first to break the silence, and his question isn’t of the tender, emotionally-fraught type you’d been expecting.

“First things first, mutant--how’d you know my name?”

Whether or not he believes you, honesty is surely the best policy.  Even if he thinks you’re lying, he might at least find it amusing.

“I have dreams,” you say, and he grunts in interest.  “All my life I’ve dreamed about another world.  I mean, I would go to sleep and have visions.”

“A prophet,” says Kurloz, an intrigued grin sliding across his face.  You grimace and shake your head.

“No, I...something else.  I don’t know what, not something from the past or the future or even this universe.  But I know they were real.  In some other world, I had friends of all different blood colors and...I can only remember some things, but some of those things are names.  Porrim.  Meulin.  Mit…  Horuss.  Others.”

“Horruss,” he says, ears twitching in surprise.  “That sweaty bastard?”

You nod mutely and then, more because you don’t want to hear the word “prophet” again than anything else, you say, “This...would be my first moiraillegiance.  My first...official quadrantmate, actually.”

His eyes flick towards the door.  “What’s your wild girl, then?  Heart?  Spade?”

“Something else,” you say shortly.  “Not a quadrant at all, just...us.  Forever.  I’ve never really...dealt with actual hate or pity before.  Just her.”

“Not until now?”

“Not until now,” you repeat, though you’re still not sure yourself.  The hatred and fury that have driven you to mindless violence before are still present, but each time he takes you aback you almost forget about them.

“Serendipity, brother,” he purrs, and there it is--a little moment of pure shock at that sudden emergence of sentimentality, eliminating all other emotions for a moment.

But only for a moment.

“You turned me in for execution,” you point out, your voice tight.  “And they  _destroyed_  me afterwards.  They ruined everything good about me.”

A troubled look crosses his face, cracks in his paint stretching as he grimaces.  “...Seems less humorous in hindsight.”

“ _Less_ humorous?” you snarl, sitting up straighter.  The confusion on his face is maddening--how can he not  _understand?_ “They beat me and humiliated me and  _burned my fucking hands off_ , can you even  _begin_ to imagine the pain?  I lost count of how many lashes they gave me before they let me die, and by then I was  _grateful_ for it!  And I hated it, and I hated--everyone, every caste, it didn’t fucking matter then, and I hated myself most of all for  _ever_ believing this could change!”

Kurloz bristles, eyes narrowing.  “Blood order’s a true thing, brother, couldn’t have changed--”

“Oh?   _Why_?”

“Because that’s how we’re born--”

“ _Why?”_

“Brother,  _brother,_ WHAT’RE YOU ABOUT, PUTTIN’ ALL THIS DAMNED HERESY IN MY PAN?”

“Because I’m a fucking heretic!” you scream back at him, head lowered even though your horns are useless as a threat display.  “And you fucking knew it when you brought me here, so don’t just shake your head and mutter about ‘how things are’ when I question the hemocaste, dammit!”

“But--”

“But  _nothing_ , every troll feels pain!  Every troll deserves to--to--”

...And you falter because you’ve just realized that these words are familiar.  You’ve said them before, a long time ago, and you thought...you thought you’d stopped believing them since.  You close your eyes, confused, lost for words.

And then a hand lands tentatively on your head, broad palm and bony fingers, claws moving through your hair.  Your first impulse is to pull away, even to lash out, but it fades almost as quickly as it appeared.  You breathe in, then out, concentrating solely on the sensation of movement against your scalp.  This continues for what might be several minutes or a single, endless moment, the emotions swirling inside you slowing gradually until you feel almost ready to lie down and sleep.

“So what’s it I can do?”

It take a moment for the words to register through the fog filling your exhausted pan.  After a long moment, you open your eyes.  “...What?”

“I think I fuckin’ owe you, brother.  I owe you for all time.”

And you realize, meeting his honest stare, that you’re speaking to one of the most powerful trolls on Alternia.  You realize, with a sudden rekindling of an old impulse, that with him on your side, there’s something you can do that you could never have done before.

“I need my family in here,” you say, and to your surprise he seems to immediately understand your use of the word.  He unfolds from his reclined position and stalks over to the hatch, carefully ducking his head to peer through it and shout,  _“BRING ‘EM IN HERE, CARDINAL PALEFACE!”_

A couple minutes later, a subjugglator much thinner and maybe a head shorter than Kurloz ushers Mother and Meulin through the door.  His face is smooth and impassive and painted almost completely white save for a few black accents.  He glances from you to Kurloz, but make no comment, and after a moment he’s gone.

You turn to Kurloz and your family, heart hammering, and say without preamble,  “I want to execute the Empress.”

Mother and Meulin stare in silence.  Kurloz’ mouth twitches for a moment and then he looses a great cracked scream of laughter and all of you jump back, wincing.  You accidentally slam one metal hand into your cheekbone in a hasty attempt to cover your ears and Meulin, after a quick look to make sure you didn’t seriously injure yourself, laughs as well.

Mother is still staring at you.  “I want to be very sure,” she says slowly as the echoes of laughter begin to fade, “that I heard you correctly.  Did you just say that you want to  _execute the Empress_?”

You nod.  She glances at your newfound moirail, eyes narrowed.

“And  _he_...is prepared to help you?”

“Don’t doubt, jade lady,” murmurs Kurloz, eyeing her with malicious interest.  “Only just got told the idea, but I ain’t got my loyalty on for the bitch, not the way a blueblood do for us.  It’d be the spiciest fuckin’ joke of all time, now wouldn’t it?”

“That is not a valid basis for trust,” she replies, her voice tight with nerves.  “And you haven’t even broached the topic with your followers--you don’t think there would be a general revolt at the idea?”

“SISTER,” Kurloz bellows, and Mother flinches.  You immediately step between them, one hand on her shoulder, the other extended warningly towards Kurloz.  He clears his squawkblister, looking faintly chagrined, and says, now in his soft voice, “Ain’t nothing stronger than church and shared blood.  Cluckbeast shits like Zahhak, they follow us ‘cause of the compulsion of caste.  We follow the Empress ‘cause it’s a laugh.  But your mutant heretic here, all bleedin’ miracles, he’s TEN TIMES FUCKIN’ FRESHER THAN HER.”

Mother holds firm this time, but you can see her hands shaking and you shoot Kurloz another glare as she retorts.  “So you can turn on a whim!  That is  _extremely_  comforting!”

“Kurloz,” you say as he opens his mouth to reply, “give us a minute alone to talk about this.”

He grumbles, still glaring at Mother, but eventually nods.  It only takes him five long, swinging strides to reach the door and in a moment he’s gone.  You hope he’s planning to address his subordinates; you want to act as soon as possible.  It’s burning you up, all the fear and rage and excitement.  

You turn to Mother and Meulin, take a deep breath, and say, “...Well?”

“No,” says Mother.

“Could work,” says Meulin, leaning against the wall and frowning up at the ceiling.  “But just us and the clowns?  I don’t trust them.”

“But I do trust him,” you say, glancing at the door.  “He’s grown up with all the casteist bullshit but he listens to me.  Believes in destined quadrantmates.”

Meulin rolls her eyes.  “Come on, Kankri, wouldn’t you want  _someone_ else up there on our side if it went sour?  Those sufferist idiots would go with us.”

But you shake your head quickly, shuddering at the thought.  “Enough of my ‘followers’ were executed the first time around.  You saw them before we ran, didn’t you?  Her troops mowed them down.”

“And so will we be if we go through with this!” Mother cries in exasperation.  “Kankri, we can just  _survive_ , we always did before--”

“Up until it all caught up with us!” you shout, your wrists throbbing as though in agreement.

“So long as we’re under protection here and not stirring up anymore rebellions--”

“And what kind of a bullshit existence would that be?”

“At least it would  _be_ an existence!  Trying to infiltrate the empress’s flagship and  _kill_ her--Kankri, even if it succeeds our deaths would practically be assured!  Even with Kurloz and his... _church_  on our side, the seadwellers wouldn’t take it well!  And they would just find the next tyrian descendant, raise her to be another evil, butchering--”

“You don’t know that,” you interrupt stubbornly.  “And if we could take control of the ship, who cares?  We could go wherever we want!  Anywhere in the whole fucking galaxy!”

Mother makes a rough, high-pitched noise of frustration in her throat, carding her fingers through her hair.  “ _Nnnnnnngh!  Take control of the ship_ , Kankri?  How in the  _hell_ do you suggest we do that?”

“I--”  You stare, poleaxed by her language.  “I’ve never heard you--you always--”

“I used to swear all the time in the brooding caverns!” she snaps.  “It was my rebellious phase--where did you think the tattoos came from?  And don’t change the subject!  How exactly were you planning to commandeer the Condescension’s personal spacecraft?”

“Mituna.”

Both of you turn to Meulin, who’s staring at you with wide, bright eyes.  “Mituna,” she says again, pushing herself away from the wall.  “He would do it for us--power the ship, override its security.  And we could rescue him!”

New energy floods your thorax and you grin at her, delighted.  “Of course, Mituna!  How could I forget--”

“Because you weren’t thinking of him,” says Mother coldly, her face still hard.  “You were only thinking of  _executing the empress_.”

You open your mouth to reply but she cuts you off, raising one hand.  “I want her to pay just as much as you do, Kankri.  But we already lost each other once and I never want to go through that again.   _Never_.  You weren’t a killer before--”

“But I’ve changed,” you tell her, wanting her to accept it, wanting  _yourself_ to accept it.  “I changed because of  _her_.  It’s her fault I’m like this and I  _can_  make her pay!”

But she just shakes her head and goes to lie down, and you’re left alone, pain and confusion roiling in your thoracic cavity, remembering how you almost repeated your old sermon at Kurloz and then the hot exhilaration at the thought of killing the Condesce, fighting to reconcile those two versions of yourself.

You’re probably meant to discuss things like this with your moirail, but you’ve never had one before and anyway, just getting him to understand would require an entirely different conversation for which you don’t have the energy.  In the end, you just lie down next to Meulin, letting her throw one arm over your waist and taking comfort in the solid heat of her body at your back.

“I don’t understand myself anymore,” you murmur, and she squeezes you once, tightly.

“You will.  It might take a while, but you will.  Just sleep now.”

\--

A week later, the church has been addressed, all murmurs of dissent quelled, and a great celebration had.  You sampled a bottle of fizzy red stuff at Kurloz’s request and spent the rest of the night in a hot haze of confusion.

And then there were plans to be made.  You had expected to do most of this work yourself, with some assistance from subjugglators who knew the Condesce’s ship better than you, but as it turns out, not all of them are as mindless as they seem.  One with oil smeared into her facepaint somehow produces blueprints of both ships and, at your prompting, marks the shortest path to the helmsblock.  Kurloz discusses the best course of action with an older troll entitled the Witmonger, occasionally glancing at you for approval.  Meulin listens in and so does Mother, but while your beloved is sometimes moved to contribute to the discussion, Mother remains impassive and silent.

You don’t feel guilty.  You  _don’t_.  This is the right thing to do.

You’re still telling yourself this a week later, as all around you purple-clad figures whoop and shout evening prayers and ready the ship for space travel.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” you murmur.  To your side, Meulin grimaces and the clown applying white and gray paint to her face in a jagged pattern huffs impatiently.

“Guaranteed, diamond,” says Kurloz, who’s seeing to your own disguise.  “You’ll only need ‘em to get on anyway.”

“Good,” says Mother, examining her own weeping, curlicue-filled design with blatant distaste.  “I’m not sure I can tolerate this for even another minute…”

A few of the nearby subjugglators shoot her looks of disgust, but to your surprise Kurloz silences them with a look and a muttered, “Oh, and the whole of you didn’t find yourselves in such discomfort when you first wore your faces?”

You’re taken aback again by the unquestioning loyalty he’s shown you, and even your family by extension.  It reminds you almost of the sufferists, and the thought sends an uneasy shiver down your spine.  He believes so firmly in the serendipity of your moiraillegiance that he hasn’t even stopped to question whether you do.  He’ll argue about the hemocaste with you, but when it comes down to it…

You feel suddenly sickened by your own actions, just as you were by Mindfang’s treatment of Mother.  Perhaps there is some semblance of pale affection for him in you, for the way he makes you return to your old ideals in order to shut down his bigotry, his violent tendencies.  But if that’s so, you certainly haven’t acted on it as you should have.

“You alright, Diamond?”

You stare up at him, mouth half-open, trying to come up with an excuse, but before you can formulate one a small subjugglator appears at Kurloz’s elbow and says, “Counting to takeoff, my lord.  Strap in or get banged around the ship.  Again.”

“ALL WHOOP,” Kurloz roars, and glances at you, pointing down the corridor.  “Head on that way.  Ever been up in the big black?”

You shake your head wordlessly, as do Mother and Meulin, and Kurloz cackles, apparently pleased by the thought of witnessing your first space voyage.

Almost the instant all of you have connected the security latchstraps around your torsos, the ship begins to rumble all around you.  Mother closes her eyes and breathes out hard through her nose, but on her other side you can see Meulin looking excitedly around, her eyes bright and curious.

Kurloz takes one of the larger seats, but his great bony legs still jut out in front of him, taking up almost half of the space.  You see him shoot you a grin, and then the air presses down on you and sooner even than you expected the floor tilts under you.  You try to turn your head and ask Kurloz how long the ascent will take, but your neck has gone weak and all you can say is,  _“Nnnhhhhrrrrrrr.”_

As the light from the windows starts to change, an audiogrub above you hisses roughly and emits the words,  _“Reaching sun-angle, blackout covers down.”_

You barely catch a glimpse of blinding light before shades drop over the multicolored class and you’re left in the shaking darkness, crushed back against your seat, feeling like your bloodpusher is trying to fight back against the weight of the ship’s movement.  Your whole body has begun to throb, half from the strangeness of the situation and half from the sudden raw realization of what you’re about to do.  You imagine your new hands dripping with fuschia blood and feel a thrill of mixed enjoyment and horror.

You weren’t aware of blacking out then, or of how long you’re unconscious, but when you come to the pressure is still there.  For a moment you think the window covers are still down, but then your eyes refocus and you see--

 _“Strrrrzzzzz,”_ you try, and you hear Kurloz laugh somewhere to your right--his thorax must be made of steel, because if you tried to laugh now you’re positive all you would get would be a weak, high-pitched exhale.

And then, suddenly, the pressure abates and you gasp in relief, falling heavily against the straps crossing your chest.  Your head feels transcendently light and so, to your delirious surprise, does your body.  

So does your stomach.

“Z-Grav takes some like that,” says Kurloz easily, watching you empty your gut into the weightless atmosphere.  “We got bags for it, hold up and I’ll scoop it before weight kicks in.”

You glance at Meulin, who seems unaffected, and Mother, who swallows forcefully as you turn to her.  A moment later, your body seems to remember where  _down_ is and falls abruptly back against the seat.  You breathe roughly out, wipe your mouth, and look at Kurloz, who’s dropping a synthetic bag down a nearby incineration chute.  He grins at you.

“Better?” he says.

“Better,” you reply, unbuckling your belts.  His grin widens.

“GOOD, ‘cause we’re three chirps out and counting from the flagship and you got a job to do.”

“I...yeah...” you manage, looking away from him.  He betrayed his empress in an instant, an  _instant_.  Because you asked him to.  His caste is notoriously capricious and willful as fuck, but this goes beyond any of the rumors.  How could this happen?

The thought echoes in the back of your head all the way out the door, into the corridor, down the stairs...but it is eclipsed suddenly when you look out of the window by the shock of seeing Her Imperious Condescension’s flagship.

You’d heard it was red, and you’d thought that meant a dark, pure red, or perhaps not red at all, just her fuschia seen in a different light.  You weren’t expecting it to be the color of your blood.

“Been that way for millennia,” says Kurloz, correctly interpreting your expression.  “MILLENNIA, you know, ‘cause that red, IT’S THE COLOR OF DANGER.”

You can feel him watching you but you don’t meet his gaze or respond.  You’re not sure what he means, but the words make your insides burn.   _That red, it’s the color of danger_.  Since long before you were even hatched.

It’s growing closer and closer as you watch, and you realize suddenly that you don’t want to be here for the moment when the massive ship takes up the whole window, fills it with that bright red.  You don’t know why, but that thought frightens you even more than what you’re about to do.

Your family is there when you move towards the door, each wearing the purple robes of church novitiates.  Kurloz suggested fitting all of you with full subjugglator gear, but Mother refused point-blank and it was later decided that the disguises wouldn’t be needed for long at all.  You take a cloak for yourself, wrapping the heavy, rough cloth over the grays and browns of your shirt and pants.  Looking down, you’re pleased to see that there’s no signs of the jade-green hems of Mother’s skirts below her disguise.

She’s looking at you when you raise your head, her brows knit together, open worry in her eyes.  You bite your lip, trying to summon some words of reassurance, but before you can speak, a green light clicks to life overhead and someone shouts,  _“Airlock engaged, all prepare to board!”_ , and the ensuing whoops and rushing crowd of subjugglators eliminate any chance of a last conversation.

You watch the doors open, trying to ignore the trepidation squirming in your chest, and let the movement of the throng carry you forward into a small, plain passage with a wide broadcast screen installed above the door at the opposite end.

As Kurloz and the clown they call Cardinal Paleface move to the head of the group, the screen flickers and a face appears--thin and unpleasant, with large violet eyes and flared membranes extending from its aural shells.

 _“And you’re here because…?”_ says the finned face, looking supremely bored.

“Who pissed in your gills?” asks Paleface, baring his teeth in a huge fake smile.  The seadweller bristles.

_“It’s an average damn security question.  Don’t fuck with me, dirtkisser!”_

The smile widens.  “And since when does His Mirthful Holiness the Grand motherfucking Highblood require an  _average damn security question_?”

_“Everyone does, no exceptions.  Now if you’re not gonna tell me, piss off or I’ll initiate intruder protocol!”_

Now Kurloz steps forward, putting a hand on his advisor’s shoulder.  “Now then, Cardinal, ain’t a damn thing to be solved by contrariness, HILARIOUS THOUGH IT MAY BE.  Some as ain’t appreciate the humor, see?  Too  _salty_ by FAR.”

The rest of the clown squad cackles and you join in hurriedly a moment late.  Mother pulls a grin just as stiff and false as Paleface’s, but Meulin, guffawing to your left, seems just as amused as the clowns by the seadweller joke.

As the laughter fades and the sneer on the seadweller’s face intensifies, Kurloz spreads his arms wide and says, “Here to pick Her Imperious Condescension’s pan about eliminating remaining radicals, Y’HEAR?  Ain’t no strange thing ‘bout that, IS THERE?  Tell her I said we  _fronds_ , alright?  SEE HOW SHE PLEASES TO HEAR YOU DONE AND SENT ME OFF AFTER I COME ALL UP INTO THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ STARS.”

 _“Fucking hell!”_ yelps the seadweller, and the lock doors begin to slide apart.   _“Just--stop yelling, dammit, and you’d better be telling the truth.”_

“Don’t doubt, wiggler,” says Kurloz, and winks as he passes through.

The interior of the ship is as red as the outside, but where the walls meet the ceiling and floor you can see great bunches of biowires running along the scarlet metal.  It’s like being in the gut of a great living thing, half metal and half flesh.

Kurloz is whispering to his faction leaders, sounding more like a leader than ever.  _“You take the controlblock--you, security, lock ‘em down--I’ll head to her block and make time--_ ” and here he turns to you, saying, “You all want to scrub off that paint, you’re welcome to it now.  Ain’t a point to it now. Meet me there when you’re done, we’ll have her for you.  Zirkas’ bunch is heading for the helmsblock and your gutterbl--your fuckin’ psionic friend, I mean.”

Something in your thorax twists at his conscious attempt to change his language.  What have you done, what have you done…

But you just nod silently and stand there watching for one frozen moment as his back retreats down the corridor.  He’s doing all of this for you.  Why?  You feel almost like pushing him to see how far his loyalty will stretch, where the  _act_ will stop.

But you know, deep in your bloodpusher, that it’s not an act, and that makes it all worse.

You turn and follow the subjugglator named Zirkas into the depths of the ship, a phalanx of purplebloods falling in behind you.  One of them, the woman who applied Meulin’s paint, reaches into a pack at her waist and hands you and your family each a damp white towel.  Mother takes one eagerly, wiping the thick paint away with great, vigorous sweeps.  You and Meulin follow suit, ignoring the subjugglator’s apparent discomfort at the sight.

The biowires become thicker and more prevalent the further you go, until stepping over the great ropey tentacles becomes pointless and you’re walking uneasily on a carpet of them.  The two thickest bunches, running along the walls on either side, supply light in two colors, the combination of which is all too familiar: to the left, red, and to the right, blue.

“That line carries power out to the rest of the ship,” says Zirkas, nodding to the left.  “And that one re-circulates power to the helmsblock controls.  They wouldn’t usually be so fuckin’ bright, but  _ship’s at rest, lights are best_ , eh?  Hahaha!”

In the silence that follows, you hear him mutter something about non-technicians, and he quickens his pace.  You hurry after him, but it’s not long before you all come up short against a small, plain red door with a keypad next to it.

Your bloodpusher sinks.  You’d imagined, somehow, that you could just walk into the helmsblock and free Mituna right away.  You hadn’t even thought you might need a passcode.

But even as your mind jumps from plan to desperate plan--is there an onboard engineer you could threaten for the number?--Zirkas whistles, long and low, and crouches next to the keypad, a look of pleased disbelief on his painted face.

“They said bits of the ship were old,” he says, running his claws over the keys.  “They didn’t say  _old as fucking globes_.  Does the HIC not even give a flying shit who gets in here?”

And then, all in one moment, he presses down two keys on the pad at once and with his other hand, jerks out the tiny cluster of grubtubes attaching it to the wall.  As the subjugglators behind you whoop and clap, the door slides easily open.

You step through before your eyes have adjusted to the darkness beyond, and the purplebloods pour through after you, strife instruments flashing into existence in their hands.  You take one tentative step after another, making it maybe five feet before you hear a soft splash and look down to see you’ve stepped into some kind of liquid.  You withdraw quickly, grunting in alarm, and Mother says, “Careful!”

You nod silently, peering into the great, dim space, trying to make sense of the room.  It comes to you slowly--first, the organic shape of the block, lacking corners or any semblance of troll-made construction but instead formed completely of biowires.  Then the...lake, if it can be called that--a sunken central area filled with fluid, quite still save for ripples still spreading from where you stepped in it.  Its surface is a soft gradient of red and blue, brightening as the conduits along the walls begin to glow more vividly.  At the center of the lake is a column of twisting tentacles, the central focus of the space, the point to which all of the wires seem to be flowing.

And there’s Mituna.

He’s dressed just as he was the last time you saw him, in his usual black and yellow, the psionic-damping goggles still strapped to his head.  But his hair is longer, hanging limp into his face, and you think he’s even thinner than he used to be.

One of your purpleblood escorts has already “convinced” a shaking blueblood to start unrigging the biowire harness, adjusting the atmosphere in the room so that the tentacles encasing him begin to open like the twisting petals of a giant fuschia flower.  

Someone must be draining the fluid around him as well, because its level is slowly dropping.  But you can’t wait for it to reach the floor and neither can Mother and Meulin.  The three of you splash through knee-high thin, bluish liquid, reaching the helm column just in time for the tentacles holding Mituna’s arms to release their hold.

And as he falls forward, he  _screams_.

“Ah--” says the blueblood, backing away as you round on her.  “His arms have been in that position for--maybe half a sweep now, and there’s only so much atrophy and stiffness we can prevent with energy stimulation, though of course it’s preferable--”

“How do we  _fix_ it?” you snarl, and she falls back against the control column, baring her throat in a fear display.

“Keep his arms straightened the way they were!  Let him adjust gradually, don’t allow him to move!  It takes a while but it’s not irreparable, I swear!”

You turn away and hurry back to where Mother and Meulin are already acting on the blueblood’s directions.  Together, they raise him out of the writhing mass that encased his lower body and settle him swiftly on the floor, keeping his arms elevated.  He’s still groaning, staring around at all of you, his narrow chest rising and falling with quick, harsh breaths.

_“--routine maintenance check, not here, not here, not here, can’t be, not again--”_

“Mituna!” says Mother, and he flinches and shakes his head wildly as though denying even the sound of her voice, now squeezing his eyes tightly shut behind the lenses of the inhibitor goggles.

_“--not here, not them, fuckin’ bullshit brain--”_

You crouch next to him, fear curling in your gut, not knowing what to say, how to wake him from whatever fever dream he’s in.  Mother says suddenly, “Kankri, the robes.  They’re the first thing he’ll see--we can’t be wearing this color when he wakes up--”

_“--not again--maintenance check--don’t listen don’t listen fuckin’--”_

“Right,” you mutter feverishly, struggling to pull the thick layers of cloth over your head.  Once it’s off you throw it over your shoulder into the drained pit and resume your place beside Mituna, searching frantically for any sign of waking or recognition.

And then his eyes snap wide open again and he’s staring right at you and all of a sudden he seems entirely lucid as he says very clearly, “You’re not here.”

“I--yes, I am,” you manage, but an awful suspicion is beginning to rise inside you, along with painful, uncontrollable anger.  You don’t want to be angry now, but it twists in your pan-- _recognize me, acknowledge me, don’t deny me--_ you clench your fists and swallow it.

He shakes his head slowly, his eyes hard, fixed on your face.  “You weren’t here the last time.  Or the time before that.  Go away.  Go away.”

“Mituna,” says Meulin sharply, twisting her body so that she’s in his line of vision.  “This is real, not a dream or a hallucina--”

“ _You’re!  Not!  Here!”_

And he tries to shake free of their grip, but as his arms begin to flex he yelps in pain and goes still again, breathing even more heavily than before.

“Yes we  _are_ ,” you growl, and though you feel childish saying it you want to say it over and over again, yell it in his face until he understands.  No matter how many times he’s had visions of you and Meulin and Mother (and fuck, how many times has it happened that he’s so adamant in not believing?), at some point he has to realize that this time it’s real.

But he’s still shaking his head, just muttering over and over again,  _“Fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off--”_

The anger rises yet again, but there’s desperation squeezing your bloodpusher too, and fear.  He  _has_ to recognize you.  He  _has_ to believe.  You strip off your shirt and drop it on the damp, fleshy floor.  Mother gasps as you rise to your feet and you remember guiltily that you never showed her your scars.  But Mituna, it’s Mituna who needs to see right now.

“Are you telling me,” you manage through gritted teeth, gesturing to your side,  “that this isn’t where the Executioner shot me?”  And you turn around to show him your back, the ridged flesh and stitchmarks, and you’re half-shouting now--”Are you telling me these aren’t from the thousand fucking lashes they gave me?  I’m not a vision of the past, Mituna, I’m  _here_.  I’ve got metal hands, for fuck’s sake, you couldn’t make that up!”

“That…”  You turn around to see him staring, mouth slack, and you kneel on the floor in front of him, reaching out to pull off the goggles.  He winces as you dig indelicately under the straps holding them against his face, but doesn’t complain.

“There,” you say as the straps slide over his horns.  “They looked fucking terrible on you anyway.”

 _“Holy shit,”_ he says, with just the faintest hint of his old lisp.

“Yeah,” you say, because there isn’t really anything else you can think of.

Fortunately, Mother is there.  She kisses Mituna’s forehead once, her eyes overbright, and then clears her throat and says with only the faintest tremor in her voice, “You need to lie down.  We’ll...we’ll find a stretcher of some sort.  The technician said your arms would take a while to adjust.”

“Legs too,” Mituna grumbles, wincing as you and Meulin settle him carefully back onto the floor.  “Haven’t used those in-- _ow!_ \--way too long…”

“You’ll have sweeps,” you tell him, your throat clenching up on the words.  “I promise you that.  Sweeps and sweeps to get used to it again.”

He shoots you a weary grin with just the faintest hint of a sneer in it.  “Don’t patronize me, Vantas, I’ve still got my psionics.”

You manage a weak, disbelieving snort.  “You only just got out of a helmsman rig, you damn liar.  Tell me that after you’ve slept for a couple hours!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Mituna mumbles.  “I fuckin’ will.  I fuckin’...”  He starts to trail off drowsily, but as you start to stand his bicolored eyes snap suddenly open and he says with an effort, “Hey.   _Hey_ , take--take me with you.  Where you’re goin’.  Don’t.  Don’t leave.  Me.  None of...you…”

“Of course we won’t,” says Meulin, as though it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, and you’re glad again that there are others here with you to speak to him because now of all times you just can’t think of the right words.

You’re still sitting there in your wet boots, staring at Mituna’s prone form, when a voice from the door wakes you from your reverie.

_“Whoop whoop, candyblood!  Grand Highblood’s holdin’ the fishbitch for you.  You ready to make some royal fuckin’ paint?”_

“I…”  You glance back at Mituna, then at Mother, who refuses to meet your gaze.  You swallow hard, your throat hot, your back prickling with apprehension and the inexorable rise of anger.  The memories are crowding in your mind too, but they seem clearer now, sharpening the anger, bolstering your resolve.  

You stand up suddenly and gesture to Mituna.  “Get someone else to help carry him with us.  Don’t leave him here.”

“Take the fuckin’ engine out of the helmsblock?” asks the purpleblood, and an involuntary growl rumbles in your chest at his skeptical tone of voice.

“Is the ship  _going somewhere_ , fucker?”

“Ain’t,” says the subjugglator, and you’re surprised to see a flash of teeth in the darkness.  “You’re fresh as hell when you’re riled, mutant.  Annoying, but fresh.  Wanna fight?”

“Hey!” snaps Meulin.  “Less weak spades, more work.  Help us carry Mituna!  Beloved, are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” you say, standing up.  “I’m going ahead, come after me as soon as you can move him.”

Meulin nods.  The subjugglator gestures for you to follow and you leave without looking back, because you don’t want to see their faces.  You don’t want to think.  What you want is to finally,  _finally_  indulge the rage that’s been burning you up since they tried to kill you.  You want to destroy the source of your suffering, and damn the consequences.

You never thought about the fate of the empire’s ruler when you preached peace and acceptance before.  If the revolt had succeeded, what would you have done?  Allowed her to live as a prisoner?  Let her go unpunished for her crimes against the population of the whole fucking planet?  God, past you cared  _so much_  and it could never have come to anything and you--you  _hate_ it.  Not least because part of you wishes you were kind and good and not full of hatred as red as your blood and as hot as the shackles you lost your hands to.

Not least because half the time you wish you had died then.

“Hey.”

You blink and start; you’ve been walking blindly for the past couple of minutes, keeping pace with the subjugglator ahead of you, but now he’s stopped outside a pair of massive double doors.  They seem to be made of some dark wood, inlaid with greening gold, distinctly out of place against the sleek red metal of the walls.  It’s as though she had them removed from some relic of a sunken shipwreck and installed here.

“Gaudy as all fuckout, right?” says the subjugglator after a moment.  You don’t answer but he continues, watching your face.  “...You really gonna kill her?”

Your wrists ache and you think--

_\--you bastards you bastards kill me already kill kill kill me damn you all to hell I’ll fucking see you there--fuck fuck FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK--_

“...Candyblood?”

You shudder and grit your teeth.  “...I really am.”

Then you take a deep breath and push through the doors into Her Imperial Condescension’s controlblock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some art that kind of goes along with this chapter:  
> The Sufferer's scars--http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/post/117578311409/i-wanted-a-sufferer-resurrection-au-that  
> Pale GHBsuff--http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/post/108234390324/resurrection-au-ghbsuff-most-everything-about


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter: a battle with the Condesce, several decisions unexpected both by Kankri's family and Kankri himself, and the promise of interesting things to come. Which I will not be writing.

VI.

You don’t see her at first.  You had expected to lock eyes with her immediately, to be somehow drawn to her, but it’s only after silence falls and several subjugglators move out of your way that a flash of fuschia and clusters of sparkling gold catch your eye.

She’s in chains.  You don’t know who had the foresight to keep some in their sylladex, but you’re relieved--ropes are often ineffective against seadwellers.  Your heart races at the sight of her, recalling what it felt like to be shackled and chained, at the whim of a merciless captor.  Your face and torso seem to ache with the echo of remembered beatings.

The thought reminds you suddenly that you left your shirt on the floor of the helmsblock, and your skin prickles with a sudden feeling of vulnerability.  It’s not the bared skin that troubles you so much as the scars you so recently showed Mituna.  You feel eyes on you as you pass between purple-clad figures and their captive crew members, and you try not to think about what they’re seeing.

As you draw level with Her Imperious Condescension, you think that at least you’re not in the company of sufferists.  Just the thought of reverent hands reaching for your striped back sharpens your anger tenfold.

She’s kneeling, but if you’re any judge she can’t be too much taller than you--at least, without counting her horns.  The image of her that you held in your mind all your life was much taller, towering over you, a fearsome shadow with burning eyes.  But she’s just a troll--millennia old, unfalteringly brutal, and glaring at you with haughty hatred, but still just a mortal creature.

And you wish she weren’t, because when you imagined this moment she was a faceless, evil shadow you could eliminate without any qualms.  You still _want_ to, you’re still burning up with fury, but you want to make her _understand_ too.  You want to hurt her until she understands what you felt, what you still feel every night and day.

“Well, brother?” says Kurloz, and you come back to yourself with a jolt to see him offering you the handle of a long, heavy culling blade.  You swallow hard, raise your hand halfway to grasp it.  You could do it now, _right now_ , have it over with.  You could.

And then you hear your name, spoken softly behind you--so softly that you almost don’t hear it.  But it’s there.

 _“Kankri,”_ says your mother, and though you don’t look back at her in that moment your mind is made up.

“--No,” you say sharply, your voice hoarse.  “Not like this.  I want to fight her, one-on-one.  Un...unchain her.”

“You sure about that?” asks Kurloz, turning to stare at you.  “You positive, brother?  I’VE SEEN HER FIGHT, seen that fishsticker go straight through a thorax--”

“Not with the trident,” you say, glancing at the subjugglator holding the imperial weapon.  “Barehanded.  Right now.  Unchain her.”

The Empress gapes for a moment as a couple of purplebloods undo her cuffs, and then snorts and cackles, making noise for the first time.  Her voice is deep and rich and full of contempt.  “You suicideel, wiggler?”

You bare your teeth and snarl but you realize even as her smile fades slightly that you don’t really have an answer to her question.  There was a time when you didn’t care whether you lived or died, but since then you’ve recovered your family piece by piece and...and Mother’s right, you can’t hurt them like that again.

But you know with iron certainty that you _can_ win.  Your rage is telling you so.

As you back away from her, the surrounding subjugglators do the same, forming a rough ring to enclose the fight.  You wonder distantly whether they’re used to such situations, whether organized battle is an everyday event in their bloody church.

She’s looking around too, her eyes calculating behind the lenses of her gaudy fuschia goggles.  “...What you gonna do when I win, Kurloz?” she asks her Grand Highblood, her eyes still on you.  “You gonna end this then?  ‘Cause I wouldn’t bet on Scrappy McNubbs here, would y--”

And then you charge her and although your fist only grazes her shoulder thanks to her ungodly reflexes, it’s worth it to see the look of outraged shock on her face.  You whip around and throw another punch, but this one misses too and you stumble backwards, out of her range, trying to circle to her side.  But she moves with you, a savage shark’s grin on her face.

“You aware of what my lusus is, fuckblood?” she sneers, lowering her head, tilting those graceful, arched horns towards you.  “Could cause the genotide of all your dirtscrapin’ fronds, easy as _whisperin_ ’.”

“She’s dead,” you say bluntly, and her eyes narrow.

“Don’t bereef you.”

You bare your teeth.  “I don’t _care_.”

And she surges forward again, hits you like a crashing wave.  You fly back, landing on your back, and you barely have a millisecond to think _this is bad_ before she draws one leg back for a brutal kick.  You roll onto your side, bringing your knees up, presenting your bare, scarred back to her, and when her foot slams into your shoulder you wheeze with pain, rolling clumsily over onto your hands and knees.  She dives for you, hands outstretched, and you’re not quick enough--her glossy fuschia claws scrape your flesh as she fixes her hands around your throat.  She’s going to choke you and you have to do something, anything to stop her.

“Meenah Peixes,” you spit out, and she _freezes_.  In that moment, your fist collides with her face and she falls back, and when you look down at your metal knuckles there’s a smear of tyrian blood across them.  Fierce pleasure flares inside you but at the same time your eyes prickle and your throat burns and you don’t understand _why_.

But you don’t have time to figure it out because the moment her back hits the floor she rolls to one side and springs up with a twist to face you again, fury and wonder mixing on her bruised face.  The two of you circle again but this time she’s more guarded, less ready to charge.  Wary.

“Who’d you hear that name from, guppy?”

“From you,” you say.  “In another life.  I know you, Meenah.”

“You crazy, fuckblood,” she snarls, and comes at you swinging.  But now the sourceless memories of that other world are flowing into your mind, memories of _her_ , and you’ve seen this move before.  You land another punch, this time to her gut, and she staggers back, coughing and retching.  You kick her in the jaw before she has a chance to recover her footing and her head snaps back, but she’s a seadweller--sturdy, powerful, old, and she doesn’t fall so you lunge forward, throwing your hands over her shoulders, and smash your head into hers with a resounding _crack._

Both of you yell, and still blinded by pain you feel something thud into your side--once, twice, and something breaks inside you but your hands are still fixed around her shoulders and you _squeeze_ as hard as you can and as she screams you shout into her face--

“I _know_ you, Meenah!  You would have been so _bored_ in a perfect, peaceful world, wouldn’t you?  Who gives a fuck about the responsibilities of royalty, you wanted all the power, none of the oblig--”

A fist collides with your left eye, and she is so much stronger than anyone you’ve ever fought, you can’t believe the blow doesn’t break your neck.  You fall on your shoulder, scramble away, barely avoid a kick aimed at your side, where something is already throbbing in agony.

“So _bored_ ,” you gasp, stumbling to your feet, clutching your side, playing up your injury (though there isn’t much acting involved).  “But what was _fun_ for you?  You never really liked _killing_ , right?  You just wanted to be a...a _badass_ , right?  Not just because you had to fight your predecessor-- _fuck_ \--”

She throws another series of punches, but her left side is weaker now--you think you broke her collarbone--and you manage to stay out of her range and throw yourself wildly forward when you see an opening.  Your torso slams against hers and as she tries to shove you violently away you spin around and by sheer luck catch her across the face with the back of one hand, the steely edge of your palm cutting open her cheek and forehead.

She’s already blinking away blood when she finally manages to force you back with a brutal side-kick to your thigh.  You cry out, barely able to keep yourself from falling to your knees, and throw yourself sideways as she comes for you again.  You barely make it to your feet in time to avoid her, and even then a jab from her weak arm crosses your nose, and if it’s not broken it sure fucking feels like it.  You backpedal frantically, blood already coursing down your upper lip and the back of your throat, trying to make space between yourself and her.

To your surprise, she lets you.  In fact, she’s not even looking at you anymore, but at Kurloz.

“You reely searious about this, clownfish?” she calls.  “If this is one of your big jokes, I ain’t laughin’!  It’s goin’ on your permanent wreckord, y’dig?”

“Ain’t nothin’ funny about this situation,” says Kurloz tightly, and you know he hates seeing you hurt like this, maybe even as much as Mother and Meulin do, and _you_ hate _that_ , you hate yourself, you have to say something to draw her attention away from him because you don’t want to hear him say any more.

“Meenah!” you shout, and it’s still the oddest thing to see her head snap around at the sound of that name.  There’s still something subtly _wrong_ about seeing that hatred on her face, directed at you.  “Your lusus had to be fed, didn’t she?” you grit out, your voice thick from the blood in your throat and nose.  “Maybe you were doing that on your own at first, and it was a thrill, killing other trolls’ lusii, proving yourself--”

“Shut up.”

“--and once you’d proved yourself strong, why not glorify strength?  Why not make the whole species stronger, better?  And that’s where the culling began--”

“ _Shut up!”_

But again, in the moment when she first starts moving the form is familiar, easy to read, and this time you duck under her guard, wrap both your hands around her good arm, and twist randomly as hard as you can.  She drives a knee into your stomach, winding you, and you cough a mixture of bile and blood, but you heard her scream again and she’s gripping the elbow of the arm you bent, grimacing in pain.

“ _You--never wanted--to kill--anyone_ ,” you wheeze, and throw yourself clumsily backwards to avoid her next blow.  But her swing is wide and clumsy and you land a blow to her body, another to her face, and then you spring forward, screaming, blood dripping from your chin, and drive her back and down.  You land lying diagonally across her, ungainly and half-blinded with pain, but you manage to force yourself up, planting your knees in slippery, coarse black hair and swing wildly at her face, again and again, your throat raw and stinging as you scream--

“ _You_ did this!   _You did this to me!_ It’s _ALL YOUR FAULT!!_ How could you _be like this_ , Meenah?!   _How--could--you--_ I _knew_ you!  I knew you didn’t want to kill anyone, _not like this_ , but you ordered the execution and _thousands_ more for _no fucking reason_ and I _hate you_ , I hate that you’d kill me without g-giving a damn, and I fuh-f- _fucking hate that I DON’T WANT TO K-KILL YOU!”_

And you stop, half-panting, half-sobbing, scarlet tears mixing with your blood, dripping from your chin onto her face.  Her nose and mouth are bloody, her eyes swollen, but you can still see Meenah Peixes there, glaring up at you in hatred and confusion, and more than your broken bones and your trembling leg and your burning face it hurts that she _doesn’t recognize you_.  And she never will.

You sit back, let yourself fall to one side, roll onto your back and cry like a helpless wiggler.  You know there are a hundred people there to see your face ugly with grief and hear your hoarse, toneless wails but you’re too tired to care, too tired to hate anymore.  Something shifts to your side--a couple of subjugglators hauling Meenah to her feet--but you don’t turn your head to look at her.

You really thought you could do it; you’d come so close so many times--with Mindfang, and Darkleer, and even the sufferists in that crowded little hive, but the rage just won’t carry you that far, not when you can remember a young, smiling, happy face.  It’s those fucking dreams again, half-memories of that untouchable world, the one you wanted so badly to recreate in your lifetime.  You wish fiercely that you still had hands of flesh and blood, that your body weren’t covered in the marks of whiplashes and blades and hot metal, that you were young again and a word from Mother could miraculously erase all pain and fear.

And somehow, as though she heard your thoughts, she’s there.  A firm hand at your back lifts you into a sitting position, turns you gently until you’re leaning against a thin torso in soft jade cloth.  Pale arms encircle you and you feel breath in your hair as she whispers wordless comfort.  Your vision blurred with tears, you glimpse a mane of dark hair and olive-green eyes, and then Meulin presses her cheek against yours, kisses a bloody cut there, grips your upper arm tightly.  You feel anchored by the hard pressure of her hand, safe for once in this single moment.

“Good motherfuckin’ job,” says a soft voice behind you.  You feel fingers running through your hair and this time you let yourself relax into that comfort, allow yourself finally to be grateful for the attention of your strange new moirail.  Your sobs begin slowly to subside as Kurloz’s words echo in your mind-- _good job, good job, good job_ …good job, you did well.

You fought Her Imperious Condescension to a stand-still.  You told her everything you wanted to.  You recovered a side of yourself you thought was dead, and perhaps that’s for the best.  Mother didn’t want you to turn into a killer, after all.

You sniff painfully and move to stand, and they let you go.  Once you’ve regained your feet, you almost have to laugh looking around at the faces of the watching subjugglators and flagship crew.  They’ve probably never seen a troll publicly comforted and reassured by so many others, and they aren’t to know that your relationships with Mother and Meulin aren’t confined to any quadrant.  Some of them are even turning purple around the ears.

You turn your attention instead to Meenah, still dazed and bleeding, secured between two of Kurloz’s brawniest purplebloods.  You open your mouth to speak, and then...stop.  Not because you’re unsure of what to say, but because of the familiar sensation of an indefinable block between the words in your head and your mouth.

You swallow hard, inhale deeply, and take a run-up to the first syllable.

“ _Nnnnn_ this is the end of yourrrr--ruh.  Reign.  One way or another.  I’ll-- _mmmm_ make sure of that.”

“Kankri,” says Mother, and you turn your back on Meenah to look at her.  She’s staring at you, confused, and you give her the slightest shrug and a watery smile.  You can’t say you’re happy that the stutter is back, but somehow it comes with a sense of relief.  Something that was driving you forwards all this time, every second of every night, has ebbed away.  The part of you that was always awake, always alert and watching and _furious_ , has realized that it’s time to sleep.

You shift your gaze over Mother’s shoulder and see Mituna, lying prone on a makeshift canvas stretcher, his arms still extended above his head.  You see a glint of doubled fangs and think for a moment he’s returning your smile, but then he jolts abruptly upright with a cry of pain, focusing on something behind you.

You turn with what feels like agonizing slowness, eyes sliding to meet the sight of Meenah, her hands cuffed yet again but breaking free of the purplebloods on either side of her, bloodied razor teeth bared to the black gums, coming for your throat.

And then there’s a sharp, electric _zzZZZAKK_ , and a shaft of red and blue light sings through the air to your left, barely grazing your shoulder, and crashes into her torso.

After a moment’s silence you hear Mother gasp and Meulin make a hoarse snarling sound, but you can’t tell until the afterimages have faded from your vision what the cause of their surprise is.  You turn, blinking, to see...

Meenah, Her Imperial Condescension, Empress of Alternia and its Empire, slumps a few feet from you, eyes wide and fixed on the three golden points protruding from her thorax.  Behind her, the subjugglator that was holding it stares, poleaxed, at the body skewered by freak chance on its prongs.  As you watch, transfixed, fuschia begins to dribble down her chin.  She looks up and following her gaze with your own, you realize she has eyes only for Mituna.  Her brow furrows, her mouth forming a questioning shape.  She seems confused, almost betrayed.

“Sorry, Kankri,” says Mituna hoarsely, though his own eyes, full of hard satisfaction, are on the dying empress behind you.  “I don’t forgive shit that easy.  Didn’t mean for her to hit the trident but hey--” he slumps back, wincing as he adjusts the position of his arms, “-- _bonus._ ”

“Right,” you say, wishing your eyes weren’t welling up again.  You don’t even know why--because someone is dying, someone who used to be your friend in another world, or because another friend here and now was driven to remorseless murder by her cruelty.

You don’t watch the Condesce’s final moments, though you’re sure Mituna does.  Instead you turn to Kurloz, who instantly gives you that unnaturally attentive stare you’ve started to grow used to.  He lowers his head and says in that night-soft voice, _“What’s it I can do you for, brother?”_

“I nuh...need to b-be alone,” you say, your voice rough and cracking.  “Alone w...wwwith my family.  Can you and the _rrrr_ rest look after...anything left?  C--cuh-crewmembers still free on the ship?”

“All of that,” he says, and his tone carries a promise.  He winks at you and gestures to the door you came in through.  “Obs deck downhall.  Stay out long as you all like.”

You don’t have the energy or voice to ask what “obs deck” means, but when you pass through the doors, carrying one end of Mituna’s stretcher, it clicks in your head--”observation deck”.  The opposite wall of the high-ceilinged block before you is almost entirely made of glass, curving away from you and opening the onto the great inky blackness of the universe.  And slightly to the left of center…

“Is that Alternia?” asks Meulin, a faintly incredulous smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“‘Course,” says Mituna as you and Meulin set him down.  “Little gray planet of murderers and slaves.  I like the view better from here.  ‘S the _only_ thing I like better from here.”

You nod but don’t speak, moving forward until the window almost fills your field of vision.  Looking at the planet far away and thinking of the billions of trolls inhabiting it, you should by all rights feel the same detached resentment you’ve regarded them with since your execution.  Instead, somehow, you feel closer to them.  To their insignificance in the black vastness.  To their potential plight without a ruler.

But there isn’t, after all, anything you can do about it, you tell yourself.  Absolutely nothing.

Nothing at all.

“ _Fuck_ ,” you say with feeling, and Mother gives you a pointed look.  You look back at her and grimace, half-chastened, half-resentful, and then sigh.  “...I just...I was l-looking forward to…”  you struggle with the words for a long moment, then force them all out in a rush.  “--leaving here, never coming back, being alone with all of you!  I wuh--wanted to forget about Alternia.”

The anger is back but it’s slower now, sadder, easier to manage.  You breathe it out through your mouth, tasting blood, and Meulin says, “What do you want to do, then?”

A vivid memory flashes in your pan--the moment before you told them you wanted to “execute the empress”.  This feels almost exactly like that moment, but ten times more ludicrous.  You grimace, glance at Kurloz, then look back at your family.

“...I want to take over.”

“Fucking _excuse_ me?” Mituna yelps, half sitting up before his arms begin to lift off the ground and his face tightens with pain.  He keeps glaring at you in fierce indignation, and says, “Did you just _turn this into a coup_?  Did you?  Tell me--fucking forbid--that the Grand Highbutt--and by the way, Meulin had better have been lying when she said you’ve quadranted the bastard--has you making dumb jokes and that’s why I just heard what I did.”

“ _Kankri_ ,” says Mother in a breathless, high-pitched voice, “what exactly would--would you plan to do in that case?”

You shake your head violently until you can make your voice work again, knowing what she has to be thinking.  “--It’s not-- _like_ that, I don’t-- _mean_ I’m going to execute all the highbloods or...do _anything_ the way she did.  I don’t wuh-want…”  Your mouth and neck work furiously for a moment and then you finally manage, “... _to do this!_ I don’t want to do this.  I t-told you, I just wuh-w-- _fuck_ \-- _want_ to leave!  But you were r-right, nothing...will get _mmm_ better and _nnnnn_ they’ll just fffffind...s--some-- _fuck_ \--”

A cool hand wraps around your forearm and you look down just in time to see Mother slip her hand into yours, fingers interlacing tenderly with your metal digits.  “Breathe with me,” she murmurs, and then, narrowing her eyes at you, “and watch your language.”

You snort through your nose, your vision blurring--partially from the warm familiarity of her words, and partially with the pain from your skull’s sensory cavities.  And then you inhale deeply through your mouth, mirroring her, eyes half-closed as you concentrate on the sound of her breathing and the rise and fall of her chest.  Your broken rib throbs, but you can bear that for now.  Mituna and Meulin don’t mutter to each other, but instead sit back and wait for you to speak again.

You count twenty breaths before you finally nod to Mother and pull away, leaning against one wall for the support and comfort of a solid surface.  When you open your mouth, you find it’s much easier to speak now.

“This...is my chance t-to really change it.  All of it, th-the things I wuh... _wanted_ to change at first.”

“They’ll fight,” says Meulin grimly.  “Most highbloods still want a fuschia up here, even if you killed the old one.”

Mituna speaks up before you can formulate a response.  “I can’t believe I’m saying anything in support of this, but you do have the whole _subjugglator cult_ on your side, fucked if I know how.  The bluebloods would follow them off a _cliff_ , so you’re set there.  And if that bitch’s monster lusus is dead then there’s nothing stopping good-for-nothing psionics like me from finally smashing the hemoarchy.  It _is_ dead, right?”

“If it weren’t, I w--wouldn’t be alive,” you tell him, and he raises eyebrows that have been half burned away from sweeps of psionic blasts.

“Okay, clearly in your head that statement makes sense.  Are you gonna explain it?”

“Later,” you say, grinning crookedly at him, and he makes a face but doesn’t pursue the matter.

“Kankri,” says your mother, and though you expect her to be wearing the same hard expression she had when you told her you wanted to kill the Condesce, you see instead sadness and determination and that deep, fierce caring that never really leaves.  She takes a deep, preparatory breath and says, “...You realize...that there will be a war, don’t you?  It might be a blessedly short one if all goes well, but people will still die.”

“ _I know,_ ” you whisper, letting your gaze drop.  “I understand that, but…I fff.  Finally w... _want_ to fight again--or, I feel like _someone_ should, and _nnnuh_ \--nno one else is going to save…”  You trail off, eyes closed as your mouth opens and shuts soundlessly.  After a long moment, you manage a deep breath and finish, “--Save...this planet...from itself.”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Mother murmurs.

“It doesn’t have to be _anyone_ ,” Mituna tells you from the ground, and then, as you search for a retort, he sighs and says, “But if it was going to be anyone, I’d pick you.  Meulin?”

“ _Someone_ has to keep an eye on him,” she says, her eyes traveling up and down your battered, blood-stained body.  “I don’t trust the damn clown to do it all.”

Mother looks from one to the other, then back to you, her eyes overbright.  You hold your breath, watching intently for some sign of reassurance, for something that will tell you what choice she’ll make, whether she really wants to stay with you through this.

When she speaks, her voice is hoarse but not harsh.  “Kankri…  I don’t want to stop you, but...think of everything that happened the last time we tried to fight.  It’s a miracle that we found each other again, let alone _survived_.  Without the Handmaid--”

“The _Handmaid_?” yelps Mituna, twisting around to stare at you.  “You’re fucking _kidding_.”

“He’s not,” says Meulin.  “She kept him in an abandoned hive for a quarter of a sweep and stitched up his wounds.  And cut his hair.”

“Fucking _hell_ , Kankri, the _Handmaid_?  The _goddess of destruction_?   _Lady Apocalypse_?”

“Yes, her!” you yell, feeling a sharp pounding start up in your left temple.  “What’s your fucking point?”

“Well, is _she_ going to help us?” Mituna shouts back, as though it’s the most obvious question in the world.

You stare back at him, lost for words, blindsided by the idea.  What if she _did_ help you?  What if you had the most feared figure in Alternian legend on your side?

But then something else occurs to you and you shake your head slowly.  “...She told me she only saved me so she c--uh--could...watch what happened to me afterwards.  It w-wwwas…entertainment for her, I think.”

“If you’re so damn entertaining, how would she feel about you _dying in a war_?” asks Mituna.  “Maybe she feels strongly enough about it to help.  Can’t hurt to check, right?  How do you get her to visit, stand in front of a mirror and say _Handmaid_ three times with your hands on your shameglobes?”

“I never heard _that_ part before,” says Mother, squinting at Mituna.

He turns faintly yellow and mutters, “Yeah, well, you didn’t grow up in my hivestem, did you?”

“Apparently not.”

“ _Anyway,_ ” says Meulin pointedly, “if there is some way to contact her, you should.”

“She won’t just come when you say her name three times,” says Mother, shaking her head.  “She isn’t that kind of psychic.”

“Disappointing,” mutters Mituna, earning himself a sharp half-amused, half-admonishing glance from Mother.

“Never mind that,” you say, eager to leave the subject of the Handmaid for now.  “If I’m d- _nnn_ doing this...what’s the next step?  Planetwide public broadcast?”

“The ship can do that,” says Mituna immediately.  Looking at him, you notice for the first time that your shirt is under his head, bundled together with the purpleblood robes to form a makeshift pillow.

Mother nods, albeit rather reluctantly.  “...And if you are going to make an announcement, you should do it sooner rather than later.  There’s no guaranteeing the news of her death won’t leak some other way.  The subjugglators, for instance, may already have contacted their churchmates on the ground.”

“Shit,” murmurs Meulin, glancing at the door.  “I’ll bet they have.”

“Then I’ll do it,” you say decisively.  “I’ll do it, and--wh-- _wuh-hhh_ -what the hell, I’ll…”  Long pause, deep breath.  “... _I’ll,_ tell, the Handmaid to come find me.  While I’m at it.”

“A speech?” says Mituna skeptically, twisting to look at you again.  You crouch next to him and haul your shirt out from under his head, ignoring his confused protests.  For a moment you consider straightening back up, but your legs are already complaining painfully so instead you drop to the floor and flap the shirt in the air once to loosen its wrinkles.

“Yes, a speech,” you say evenly, and start pulling the damp garment over your head.  When you finally get your head into the open air again, he’s still giving you that uncertain look.  “...What?”  You try your best to sound coolly bemused and ignore the way your skin has begun to prickle in apprehension of what you’re about to do.

Mituna huffs through his nose and looks, grimacing, from you to Mother to Meulin, and then back.  “It’s just,” he says, and then, all at once, “oh what the hell, look…  Are you sure you can get through an address to an entire fucking _planet_ without stammering out and stopping for a whole five minutes in the middle?”

 _“Mituna!”_ Mother snaps, but you catch her eye and she settles again, looking disgruntled.  You can’t deny you weren’t also stung by his words, but perhaps that’s because there’s some truth to them.  Or there was, before all of this happened.

“I can do it,” you say, looking down at your metal hands.  “I know I can.  I just...need to...change b-back.  I think I can flip that switch in my mind now.”

Mother, who’s been watching you closely, says, “Will this be a particularly...angry speech, then?”

You give her a weak smile, aware as you do so that there’s still blood crusted on your face.  “Probably.   _Mmmm_ but, it’ll be about equality and, acceptance and…ev--erything I used to p-preach.”

“That’s alright,” says Meulin cheerfully.  “Some trolls listen better to angry.”

“What will you tell them?” asks Mother, following your lead as you move to raise Mituna’s stretcher again.  You grunt as the effort makes your body protest, and Meulin moves to help you as you answer.

“...The truth.  All of it.  There’ll be plenty who won’t believe it, but I’d rather tell a hard truth than a lie that’s easy to swallow.”  The words are coming faster now, the way they did before, but this time the fire in your gut isn’t sharp and sick but purposeful, almost buoyant in its heat.  Controllable, at least for now.

“Alright,” you say, glancing back at all of them with fierce fondness.  “Together.”

\--

It’s later.

Your face is clean, your wounds bandaged, your nose splinted.  The tealblood doctorturer, who was present to witness your address and seemed all too pleased to hear that Her Imperious Condescension was dead, told you sternly not to move and suggested you rest in the empress’s recuperacoon.  This offer you flatly denied, choosing instead to sleep in the crew’s quarters below.  You and your family share the block, but while Meulin and Mother slid gratefully into their own ‘coons after helping Mituna into one of his own, you’ve decided to stay up.

You’re not sure why, exactly.  Perhaps it’s the anger still smoldering inside you after shouting into a recording device for what felt like an eternity, or the way your whole body seems to be a throbbing ache, or the memory of fuschia blood slipping between Meenah’s teeth.  Or maybe it’s all of those and more.

Or maybe, you think, as the speaker grub next to you buzzes and Kurloz’s voice crackles through it, you were just waiting for a visitor you didn’t know for certain was coming.

_“Got one ship pullin’ through, Diamond.  Vid check says it’s a rust bitch with curl-as-fuck horns.”_

“Let her through b--uh--b-before...she breaks the door open,” you murmur, lying back.  “It’s fine.  And Kurloz--”

_“What?”_

“Thanks...for everything.”

_“...Ain’t no need--”_

“Yes, there is.  Let’s.  Talk.  Llllater, alright?”

_“All whoop, Your Suffering Signlessness.”_

“And stop th-that.”

You hear the first high-pitched notes of one of his signature cackles before the sound cuts out and you’re left in the cool dark to wait for the Handmaid.

You don’t hear her footsteps, just the faint crackle of psionics as she floats into view like the ghost most trolls know her as.  You consider sitting up, but just the thought makes your side burn and instead you raise one hand in lazy greeting.

“Kankri,” she says.

“...Handmaid,” you reply, deciding to save her real name for times when she tries your patience.

“What do you want?” she asks, blunt as ever, and you close your eyes, trying to work out a proper answer.  She snorts and you feel the air move as she comes closer, the hem of her skirt brushing your arm.  “You didn’t have a plan in mind when you sent an ultimatum to all of Alternia?  Poor planning.”

Well, that was fast.  “Let me think, _Damara,_ ” you mutter, and then hiss through your teeth as her foot nudges your hurt side.

“Enough of that,” she says sternly.  “Your answer.  Now.”

“You saw the broadcast,” you reply, your teeth gritted.  “We’re going to fight.  Again.  And we might actually have a chance this time, but with you--”

“I will not be your _servant_ ,” she snaps, and you feel yourself brace again for more pain.  But the second jab to your broken rib fails to come, and you open your eyes for the first time to look up at her.

“...Do I _look_...l-like I could make a servant of anyone?” you ask shortly.

She snorts and glances at the recuperacoons.  “As if you haven’t already.”

At this, you really do sit upright, outrage overriding pain for a moment.  “They’re not my _servants_ , they’re my family!  I would never--”

“But they do serve you.”

“And I serve _them_.”

“You are their center.  The connecting point for them all.  They would do anything for you.  I wouldn’t.”

“I’m not asking you to,” you grunt, lowering yourself again as your eyes begin to water.  “But you wanted to see what I would do with my second chance?  This is it.  I felt obligated to tell you in case you were still invested in the...entertainment I could provide.”

There’s a pause, a long one, during which you’re practically holding your breath--half because you have no idea how she’ll respond, and half because breathing still hurts a lot.

Her voice seems loud in the silence when she finally says, “You brought me here so you could _beg_.”

“No,” you say, indignant, but you can see her shaking her head in the shadows.

“You’ve been at my mercy since I saved you.  This is more of the same!”  And to your surprise, you think you can hear just the faintest of smiles in her voice.  It’s infuriating.

“We don’t _need_ your help,” you start, but then she _laughs_ \--a deep, superior chuckle that’s as annoying as it is surprising.

“Well, you weren’t wrong, Signless.  You are still entertaining.  Moreso than I remembered.  You’ll see me again, but not when you call.  Not again.”

“I’m honored,” you snap, thinking you’ll be lucky to get any sleep at all with the urge to punch someone in the face tightening your guts.

“You should be,” she says, and then she’s gone.  After a couple of minutes even the faint electric smell of psionics fades and you’re left to wonder whether she was really here at all.  You thought, somehow, that it would be more satisfying to gain her allegiance.

\--

When you finally wake up, it’s to the sound of many, many voices outside the door.  You raise your head just enough to look around the block and see Mituna, his hair still slick and greenish with sopor slime, letting Meulin gingerly raise and lower one of his arms while Mother holds the other.  He winces as the arm Meulin’s holding reaches a right angle to his body and Meulin kneads his shoulder with her other hand, making him bite his lip and narrow his eyes with discomfort.

“Hey,” you say, your voice hoarse and raw with sleep and too much yelling.  They all turn to look at you and Mituna says, “Finally!”

“Finally what?” you manage, trying and failing to clear your squawkblister of the gravel apparently coating it.  Not only that, but you’ve been breathing through your mouth all night, given the state of your nose, and your lips and tongue are bone-dry.

“Finally you’re awake and ready to start assembling your... _military corps_ , as your moirail put it,” says Mother, glancing at the door with an expression of distaste.  “How they plan to find anyone in the Condesce’s army whose loyalty would sway so easily to you, I don’t know.”

“Just so long as it doesn’t involve torture,” you say sharply, forcing yourself up with an effort that feels practically heroic, considering how horrifically stiff you are.  “D-did Kurloz say anything about that?”

“No,” says Meulin, bringing Mituna’s left arm back up over his head again as an attempt to drop it below a right angle produces a high-pitched yelp.  “But that’s how his people have been doing it for longer than we’ve been alive, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“ _Dammit_ ,” you growl, and haul yourself to your feet.  Every step makes your sore legs twinge, and as your aeration sacs expand your side starts to complain again as well.  Mother comes after you, putting one protective arm around your waist and leaning down to inspect your swollen face.

“Oh dear, you look dreadful...you’ll need nutrition and hydration before you talk to _anyone_ , especially with everything else happening.”

“Like what else?” you ask sharply, reaching out for the door.  Mother stops your hand gently and pulls you around to face her, looking very grave.

“Like…”  she sighs and glances back at Mituna and Meulin, who have stopped their exercises for a moment to watch the two of you.  “...We’re receiving messages from all over the world.  Nobles who were in contact with this ship before the Condesce died, lowbloods who found ways to access the signal--Mituna says it isn’t as difficult anymore now that her technicians aren’t screening it--and they all want to talk to _you_.”

“Oh,” you say, raising your hands carefully to your face and moving your fingers over your blinkflaps.  You haven’t mastered delicate pressure yet, but at least the chill of the metal digits is a little soothing.  “...Juh...just like the old d-days, then.”

“Yeah,” calls Mituna, “except you’re up in a spaceship where they can’t mob you, you’ve got two highblood classes and almost all of the psychic lower castes on your side, and--well, we don’t _know_ \--”

“She visited while all of you were sleeping,” you interrupt, and his look tells you you anticipated his words correctly.

Mituna stops gaping after a moment, long enough to say,  “She--the Handmaid, she was--”

“In this block, yes,” you say, feeling your lip curl involuntarily at the memory.  “Be glad you missed her.”

“She’s not _that_ bad,” says Mother, almost defensively.  You turn to her, eyebrows raised in disbelief, and to your shock and amusement you think you spot a jade tinge spreading across her cheeks.

“She is,” you say, half-grinning at her.  “But she...might help, I think.  Only on her terms, of course, but Mituna was right--she doesn’t feel like letting me die just yet.”

“Knew it!” Mituna crows, and Meulin elbows him playfully, knocking him onto his side.  While they scuffle and shout, you take a deep breath, eyes closed, listening to the clamor outside.  It sounds like political argument between at least five people, all of whom are talking at once without any regard for what the others are saying.  Your spine prickles as that residual rage rises again, unbidden but almost familiar by now, and you know you’ll never really be rid of it.

“Alright,” you say, meeting Mother’s eyes, and when you look at Meulin and Mituna you see they’ve stopped arguing and are watching you expectantly.  Meulin rises to her feet and Mituna, with a jerk of his head, levitates himself in a cocoon of red-blue light.  With all their eyes on you, you feel acutely aware of what the Handmaid told you hours earlier--” _You are their center.  The connecting point for them all.  They would do anything for you.”_ \--and you feel the weight of that responsibility.  You’re sure it will only increase after today, with battles and treaties and a war for the soul of Alternia.

But with your loved ones around you and fire in your heart, knowing that everything was not taken from you the night you died, you’ll confront this night’s trials with all you have.

You reach out and open the door, and they follow you through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all for reading! Thanks especially though to SplickedyLit/SpoonerizedSwiftness, who helped me plot this out on the long drive back from a Homestuck meetup last December. I'm really glad I actually got around to writing and finishing it and I hope you've all enjoyed it (or at least found it a compelling read)!  
> As for the rest of the story, I've thought about it but I almost certainly won't be writing it! Suffice to say, the battle is eventually won and by the grace of his Beforus visions, he'll be able to evacuate the planet before the meteors hit. He'll also meet Karkat and Feferi, and there'll be an interesting conflict over whether he should pass the rulership to his descendant or to the Empress whose ideals shaped his dream world. Ah, the possibilities!


End file.
